Festivals, fairs, large sports
or cultural events play an important role in strengthening a city's
economic base and quality of life. They help raise the attraction
of a city and increase the number of visitors, which requires a good
management of their mobility and to guarantee easy access to the events
and points of interest. The everyday transport demands (e.g. commuters)
might aggravate these potentially negative effects in many cases.
A different 'event' aiming for the same targets, is the upgrading
of city (transportation) infrastructure, often causing a disruption
to mobility first. Both, events and construction, are temporary in
nature and impose specific challenges to transportation. Mobility
management measures are good tools to cope with those challenges and
to finally guarantee a positive outcome.
Here some highlights on results:
Temporary events can act to stimulate the introduction of long-lasting
services. In Porto (Portugal), a growing proportion of the tourists
seeking information at the tourism office also utilise the mobility
advice offered (from 11 to 15 % of those entering the tourism office
within 3 months). In Rome, three of the eight new pilgrims bus lines
(originally only for the holy year 2000) were so well accepted that
they are still in operation to serve regular tourists, inhabitants
and commuters. Good promotion and a single ticket led to an increase
from 39.000 to 360.000 monthly passengers. In Leipzig, in-advance
information and a mobility centre directly on site during construction
work on tramlines successfully helps to keep complaints of passengers
at a normal level and to cope with information requests 3 times as
high as usually. In Rotterdam, good coordination of public transport,
shuttles, access restrictions and combined tickets reduced car usage
by 38 % on the day of the Rotterdam marathon with an increase in public
transport usage of 60% compared to a normal day.
