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Rotterdam
The City of Rotterdam welcomes many festivals
and events and offers support in terms of
organisation. Temporary events attract visitors and therewith, extra
travellers. Additionally, events themselves tend to influence the accessibility
of the city. In order to avoid a negative effect on the daily mobility and the
attractiveness of the city, there is a need to make travelling as easy as
possible. For this purpose, mobility management is used. The Rotterdam Marathon
and the World Port Days are examples of annual events that attract thousands of
people. During recent years, scenarios have been worked out to help manage
these large visitor flows and the problems they create for the accessibility
and the mobility situation.
The objective for the MOST project within Rotterdam was to promote the use of
sustainable transport among the visitors that were expected for the Rotterdam
Cultural Capital of Europe 2001. It became clear rather
quickly, that the CC programme should not be seen as one event, but in reality
consisted of many events, spread in time. None of the scheduled events
therefore called for radical MM measures. However, the city still wanted to
promote the use of sustainable transport modes by raising their attractiveness.
Sustainable transport was promoted through the following measures:
·
Special event tickets offered by the local PT provider,
combined entrance fees with PT ticket.
·
Special arrangements including an overnight -stay at a
hotel, entrance fees to several events or places of interest of the CC 2001 and
a reduced ticket for PT in Rotterdam.
·
The route of the historical circle
tram was adjusted to encompass most
of the important CC event locations.
·
An information centre, the Calypso, was
the CC headquarters, which main task was to provide programme and event
information. Additionally, visitors could get (personalised) information on PT,
tickets, and travel information for special events (sometimes even available as
flyers). The Calypso was a temporary institution.
·
Close cooperation between PT provider
and the event organisation committee
Additional services were also implemented for the
European Championship: extra manpower, special time schedules, special types of
transport (shuttles, group taxis), special ticketing, dynamic route guidance,
dedicated routes for PT and taxis, detour routes for normal transport, clear
and safe walking routes including good signage, special embarking facilities,
real time information via the web site, info brochures for the public and own
staff, 200 city ambassadors at strategic locations like stations or airport and
infotainment centres.
Based on
the data that were collected, Rotterdam CC 2001 was a success. The 524 projects
attracted more than 2.25 million people. An estimated 50.000 people visited the
Calypso, 47 % of these from the larger Rotterdam area, 29 % foreigners and 24 % from the NL.
Foreign tourists, however, made much more use of the regular tourism centre to
obtain most information. Periodical surveys showed that most visitors of the
Calypso highly appreciated this service. Public transport
was the most popular: about 40% of the (Dutch and foreign) tourists to the
cultural capital came by train, tram/bus/metro or taxi, 32 % used the car.
Another 10% used motorcycles or scooters.
Prerequisites for
success are:
·
Ticket integration:
Combined tickets are well-accepted, especially when they are acquired
automatically with the entrance fee to an event or other attraction.
·
accessibility restriction combined with good alternatives (PT access, shuttle
services)
·
good PT and good parking facilities where it does not effect the accessibility of the
city, i.e. on the outskirts or outer rings of the city and shuttle services to
and from the event site.
·
the cooperative
co-ordination group, consisting of major players who take full
responsibilities for allocated tasks. Thereby, transportation problems are
never addressed only when they appear (when it is already too late) but they
are solved through forward planning by regarding the specific nature of an
event, its objectives, attractions and visitors.
Source: http://mo.st
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