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TRAVELSMART SPECIAL EVENTS PLANNING RESOURCE KIT, 2004

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03 - Auditing the Facilities at Your Event/Venue

At a Glance

A successful special event access plan will rely on four key factors:

This section will help you to answer the first question - how to understand your situation. This will include completing an audit of your event and the transport infrastructure in the area. You can the use this information to build on your strengths and tailor an effective event access plan for your event.

The remaining three key factors will be covered in Sections 04, 05 and 06.

Crowd scene

Selecting a Venue

If you have not already selected a venue for your event, you should think carefully about the transport facilities that are available at potential venues.

  1. Are there safe and accessible pedestrian routes to the venue?
  2. Are there bicycle facilities close by?
  3. Is the venue near to public transport hubs, such as railway stations?
  4. Is the venue well served by bus services? Are there taxi ranks nearby?

It is also important to consider the location of any related events. For example, if your event is a conference or seminar and you are organising dinners or evening entertainment, how will people travel to these locations? Can they get there by walking, train, bus or taxi? Could you run a shuttle bus, or provide free public transport tickets as part of the registration? (eg: Sydney 2000 Olympics entry included a rail ticket).

Special Event Types

There are many different types and scales of special events, from local street fairs to the myriad of events associated with the Olympics. These can be summarised into four main classifications:

1. large scale on-street events, such as a street festival, cycle race or triathlon
2. large scale off-street events, such as a sports events at a stadium
3. small scale on-street event, such as a local street party in a residential area
4. small scale off-street events, such as a conference, or seminar

Each of these events would have an impact on the local area and would involve people travelling to and from the venue. All events offer an opportunity to encourage people to travel by walking, cycling or public transport. Remember… every little bit counts!

Event Characteristics

What type of event are you organising?
Before you start to develop a package of measures to encourage people to travel by sustainable modes of transport to your special event, it is essential that you understand the nature of the event that you are organising, how many people will come to it and how they are likely to travel. Using this information you can define an optimistic but achievable set of targets.

As a checklist, here are some questions you should answer about the event you are organising:

This information will help you estimate the number of people who will travel to the event by different modes of transport.

How will people travel to your event and where will they come from?
The type of event you are organising will attract people with different travel characteristics. For example, the Philip Island Motorcycle Grand Prix in Melbourne attracts a significant number of motorcyclists. Therefore, an event access plan based around bus services is likely to be ineffective because these people will still prefer to travel by motorcycle. Similarly, if you are organising a cycling event, it is likely that the people who attend will like bicycles and may prefer to ride to the event.

Estimating the likely travel characteristics of the people coming to your event will help you to define the basic travel demands on the network and the types of measures to implement.

If you are organising a recurring event such as a sports match you may be able to identify this information through surveys and establish an event access plan gradually.

Gathering Data
If you are organising the event for the first time, you can gather this type of information from a wide range of sources through a literature review and consultation process. However, during this process it is important that you gather data relevant to your region or area. While international literature may appear to be applicable to your event, people in different countries have very different travel habits and it is not possible to directly adapt this information from another country to Australia.

Some excellent sources of information include public transport operators who often collect data about certain travel conditions. By speaking to these operators you can gain an understanding of conditions that happen around other similar venues during their special events. For example, if you are organising a music concert, you can contact the public transport operators in the area around other similar venues.

Other sources of information include:

Remember that service levels for public transport can vary throughout the day and on different days of the week. You may be organising an event that will be held over a weekend or on a public holiday with reduced public transport services.

This process can be very complex if you are organising a major event and you may need assistance from a specialist consultancy. You can find the contact details of suitable organisations through an internet search, your local library or through the telephone book.

How many people will come to your event?
You can estimate this information from the capacity of the event - some examples of this are the number of seats in the stadium, the capacity of the festival or the number of spaces at a conference. It is likely that this information will be fairly easy to estimate from your other planning processes.

Pedestrian Facilities

Have a look around your venue and find out what facilities are available for pedestrians. The best way of finding out this information is to print out or photocopy a map (remember to check the copyright) and note which facilities are available and where they are - you can use this to create your Access Map later on. The following list will give you some idea of the things to look for.

Cyclist Facilities

Now use a new map to note which facilities are available for cyclists. Here is a quick checklist that you can use for the audit:

Public Transport Facilities

Using a new map, have a look around your venue and take a note of the public transport facilities that are available, some of things that you should look for include:

Access for People with Mobility or Visual Impairments

It is important that your event caters for the needs of people with mobility or visual impairment.

A checklist of the key facilities you should identify is provided below. Please note that this list is not comprehensive and that you should consult relevant mobility groups to ensure that you meet the requirements of National and State legislation, including the Disability Discrimination Act (sometimes referred to as the DDA).

Car Parking

The availability and location of car park facilities are a significant factor in the choice to drive to or from a special event. Therefore your parking strategy will, as much as any other factor, determine the success of your event access plan. Here are some of the things you should note down in your car park inventory:

04 - Objectives, Targets and Indicators

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At a Glance

Once you have completed the audit of your event, it is likely that you will have a good understanding of how many people will come to your event, their likely or preferred mode of travel and the facilities you have available. Now it is important to set some targets for your event access plan.

Establishing a series of achievable targets is the second key factor for a successful event. The remaining two key factors - tailoring and promoting a package of measures - will be covered in Sections 05 and 06.

This section will provide you with an understanding of what objectives, targets and indicators are, how you set them and how to develop an effective monitoring process.

Aerial view of cars in carpark

The Purpose of Objectives, Targets and Indicators

You need to set objectives, targets and indicators to monitor the progress of your event access plan. You may want to do this on an ongoing basis for recurring events, or just once to see if you met the transport objective for a single event.

The Objective is the overall aim of your plan. This can be something as simple as reducing demand for car parking at your venue, or reducing congestion in nearby streets. Targets are the milestones that help you to achieve the objective, such as increased customer "catchment" population through better transport availability, improved customer satisfaction, through not having to negotiate traffic and car parks, or earlier customer arrivals and/or later customer departures, due to better transport availability, while Indicators are the measurements that you use to see if you're meeting targets.

Identifying Objectives

It is important that the objective of your plan is tailored to the event and venue that you are using. Otherwise, you may find that it sounds good, but isn't achievable in your area because you don't have any trams, the area is too hilly for cyclists, or another reason specific to your event.

Having established the capacity of transport modes that offer an alternative to the private car you need to formulate a realistic, clear and concise objective.

The best way to make sure that your objective is going to be the best for your site is to use the information you gathered in the site audit to set the objective. Here are some examples of common objectives identified through site audits:

There are many objectives that you could set yourself, but if you look at your audit results it should be easy to see one that will be important to your event. The steering committee helping to organise the transport aspects of your event may also be keen to help set the objectives.

It is likely that this group will have some experience of the objectives established for other events in your area that have been successful or unsuccessful and the reasons why this happened. This is important information that you can use to make sure that you learn from those lessons and make your objectives work.

Setting Targets and Key Performance Indicators

Targets

Now that you've established the objectives of your event access plan, you need to identify the targets and indicators that will help you to achieve the objectives.

Targets should be flexible and able to adapt as you progress with the plan or conditions change. These are the tools that you'll use to measure your achievements.

Your targets must be SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time based. SMART principles are often used in planning because they are so effective. The best way to check if your target is SMART, is to write it down and check that it covers each SMART aspect. For example, a theoretical target may be to:

'Increase the number of people who cycle to my event by 5%.'

That's a specific statement so it meets the first principle. Is it measurable? Yes, because you can measure how many people use the cycle racks at your event. Is it achievable? Yes, because I have enough racks to let 5% of my crowd park their bikes. Is it realistic? Yes, because about 3% cycle at the moment, the area is quite good for cycling, there are some cycle routes nearby and I'm going to actively promote cycle parking. Is it time based? No, I'll need to change my target to:

'Increase the number of people who cycle to my event by 5% over the next two years.'

Another example, which may be appropriate for a one-off or first time event, could be to:

'To develop an access map that shows pedestrian, bicycle and public transport facilities for issue one month before my event starts'

As you can see, your targets do not always need to be quantifiable; they can also be 'action' targets.

It is a good idea to link your target to Government Policies. Key Australian policies are listed in Section 10 - Key Policies/Initiatives. The steering group, local councils and/or State Agencies will be able to advise you about the targets that they are working to.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI's)

Key performance indicators are used to track your progress. In the sample target we identified 'to increase the number of people who cycle to my event by 5% over the next two years', one of the key performance indicators for this target could be the number of people using cycle racks at the event.

Some more examples of key performance indicators that you could use include:

Measurement and Monitoring

If you are trying to achieve a progress target, such as reducing the number of cars that come to your event, it is important that you have a 'baseline' against which you can measure progress.

For special events, the key baseline is known as 'mode split' or the percentage of people who travel by each mode of transport. You could present this information as a table, a pie chart, or a bar chart. The key modes that you should monitor (if they are applicable in your area) are:

The baseline 'mode split' is typically identified by surveying a representative number of people with questionnaires or interview techniques. It is important to survey enough people to ensure that you have confidence in the results, but remember not to make the questionnaire too long.

If you have defined other targets, such as use of a pedestrian walkway, or cycle racks, you may also want to monitor the number of people who use these facilities.

You can identify your 'response rate' by dividing the number of returned forms by the number issued. As a guide you should try to aim for a response rate of around 40% or more.

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