Heaton Park in a residential area five miles north of Manchester city centre, was the venue for one of Europe’s largest festivals, Parklife. Hence a need for minimising disruption and inconvenience to locals.
Showsec the event security contract firm report a crowd management strategy designed to manage the flow of tens of thousands of people and best use of the public transport over the two-day festival.
Despite all the rain this year, it did not deter thousands heading towards Heaton Park on a fleet of Parklife Express shuttle buses from Minshull Street in the city centre, as well as the Metrolink service or indeed taxis all day.
After the introduction of new transport systems in 2015, the latest test of their effectiveness was the wet ground across the site and the fact that people who had braved the wet weather for several hours were even more eager than normal to make a swift departure at the end.
Alan Wallace, Showsec’s Regional Manager for the North, who was the Security Operations Manager at Parklife. He said: “Parklife is unique for a festival of this size because it has no camping, so everyone comes and goes on each day.
“With the movement of such a high volume of people in a short space of time, particularly at the end of each day, we have worked closely with the client to introduce effective transport solutions in support of the operators providing those services.
“Two important aims in that respect have been the safety and enjoyment of Parklife fans and, just as significantly, the effect it can have in minimising disruption to the local community due to the close proximity of residential housing right around Heaton Park.
“There has been a strong focus on the ingress and egress operations therefore and we have been quite innovative with the development of queue management.
“That planning has involved talking through flow calculations with the client, the design of a holding pen system to control the release of people in stages and the staffing at each pick-up and drop-off point to manage a smooth and effective operation.
“While it is important to have a measure of control at the height of any rush, it is also crucial to manage people’s expectations in terms of waiting times so that they don’t become impatient and try to seek another means of departure.
“Several miles of barriers go into building queue systems on the periphery of the site, including one for the Parklife bus station, which has its own dedicated entrance at the northern end of Heaton Park for the shuttle bus service.
“The Parklife Express runs from 9am in the morning on each of the two days until the early hours, ferrying almost 30,000 from the city centre and back again, so queue management is also required at that point on Minshull Street as well.”
