Posts by Sacha
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Rudman also nails it.
For months, Prime Minister John Key and his Rugby World Cup party planner Murray McCully have been tweeting the world, inviting all and sundry to cruise down to Party Central on September 9 and have a ball.
They promised the biggest fireworks display ever seen, local bands, a fleet of waka and all for free. Tickets? No worries bro, just bowl up at the gates and say Muzza invited me. It'll be sweet.
Now, like teenagers cleaning up the mess at their parents' house after that gathering for a few mates went feral, Muzza doesn't want to know. The minister who's been driving every one involved batty with his micro-managing of the project, says he was out of the room at the time. It's everyone else's fault. Auckland Transport (AT), he says, dropped the ball.
In fact, there's so much finger-pointing, that if the digits were loaded guns, there'd be bodies littering the corridors of power.
...As far as the over-crowding along the waterfront was concerned, it is, in hindsight, weird the experts didn't expect the sort of crowd they got, and planned accordingly.
After all they'd hyped the show up, even encouraging CBD bosses to send workers home early to make way for the expected crowds. They'd widely promoted the extravaganza as free, which always appeals, and told everyone to leave their cars at home because of the zillions expected. Finally, the weather was unseasonably perfect.
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I am also in total agreement with Joshua's assessment of Friday's debacle:
I’m reasonably confident that the transport system could have coped with either getting 60,000 people to and from Kingsland or getting 200,000 people to and from the city centre.
In the Bledisloe Cup game a couple of months back a combination of buses and trains carried over half the audience without too many problems (just a few delays after the game, but that was somewhat to be expected). Similarly, the transport system to and from downtown copes with the daily rush hour and also copes with big events in the city like Santa Parades, Christmas in the Park and so forth.
Coping with either of the two events would have stretched the system, coping with both at the same time in the same place fundamentally was just too much.
The opening night events were probably over-hyped quite a lot: the music on Queens Wharf was pretty useless to around 90% of people in town because they couldn’t get on the wharf. The waka arrival in the Viaduct Harbour was pretty cool, but once again because the crowds were so big it was impossible to see the mass haka or anything else.
The fireworks were also probably best seen from high points or coastal points around the Waitemata Harbour – but people weren’t told that, they were told that the best experience was to be had by getting downtown, by public transport, early. So we did, in HUGE numbers.
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Field Theory: Four Years Ago, in reply to BenWilson,
those choices were dictated by the comparatively small population of Auckland, and its extremely hilly and harbour-divided geography
The choices over the last 7 decades were political, not geographical. Joshua Arbury's blog has extensive detail (and cool old maps).
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Hard News: Just don't call it "Party Central", in reply to Kumara Republic,
Sounds like they may have resulted from panic about being trapped in crowded carriages without adequate communication. And from people determined to get to the bloody game if only they could get off the train.
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Field Theory: Four Years Ago, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Some discussion on other thread too.
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Before even a hasty review is done, both Brown and Key seem to have decided to pin this on the train operator.
Prime Minister John Key says the blame for for Friday's Rugby World Cup transport debacle lies firmly with Auckland Transport and rail company, Veolia.
...Auckland Mayor Len Brown is expecting a briefing from officials today on what went wrong, but is already pointing the finger at train company Veolia.
Michael Barnett at least mentions the role of event planning as well. And the Greens note some long-term causes and implications.
“Everyone is pointing fingers, trying to pass the buck faster than a Sonny Bill Williams offload," says transport spokesman Gareth Hughes.
"But the roots of Auckland’s transport woes are a deep bias in transport planning and Government funding.”
Mr Hughes says that over the next 10 years, the Government plans to spend seven times more on motorways than on public transport.
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Hard News: Just don't call it "Party Central", in reply to DexterX,
Agree.
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Hard News: Just don't call it "Party Central", in reply to DexterX,
This article from the herald provdies a summary
Though transport is not the main point, as I've said on the thread where we've been discussing this.
Focusing on transport operations without considering what drove un-catered demand is not going to help, though the various political 'leaders' involved may welcome a scapegoat or two.
As well as the transport problems, another issue is that instead of providing additional fanzones at Henderson, Manukau and Albany on Friday night, cup organisers put all their resources into "the biggest party Auckland has ever seen" on the waterfront, knowing Party Central on Queens Wharf could accommodate only 12,000 people.
But about 200,000 people poured into downtown Auckland.
Now why would you ask Auckland Transport to tell you the answer to that?
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Hard News: Just don't call it "Party Central", in reply to recordari,
Arrrghhh!
reckon.
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Hard News: Just don't call it "Party Central", in reply to recordari,
Anything that prevents a repeat visit from Limp Bizkit is Ok in my book
A Nickelback booking?