planning transport for special events: a conceptual framework and future agenda for research

ABSTRACT

Facilitating successful access to specialevents is key to their success, yet a transportand events research agenda is still toemerge and transport is often peripheral tothe tourism destination managementliterature. This paper uses a conceptualframework to analyse the transportimplications of holding special events. Thepaper concludes with comment on whereand when it is best to host events from atransport perspective and mechanisms tofacilitate more sustainable travel choices toevents within destination areas. The paperprepares the ground for further analysis anddevelops a future agenda for research.Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Accepted July 2007

Keywords: transport; travel; events;destinations; externalities; congestion;sustainable tourism.

INTRODUCTION

Transport plays a key role in the organi-sation, planning and successful outcomeof events ranging from small-scale local

festivals up to the large-scale internationalmega-events. It is essential that participantsand customers can travel to and from an eventfor it to succeed, and yet, to date, transport hasnot emerged as a core focus in the event man-

agement literature and is often peripheral tothe tourism destination management literature(Dickinson et al., 2004; Schlich et al., 2004;Schiefelbusch et al., 2007). Tourism transportrarely features in UK urban or regional trans-port planning models, essentially because it istemporary in nature (Quarmby, 2006). As acomponent of tourism transport, the travel toand from events is among the most temporary.The impacts are concentrated in time and havethe potential to cause significant short-termproblems for destination areas, such as con-gestion and pollution. This paper aims toaddress this omission. It proposes an analyti-cal framework to aid the assessment of thetransport impacts of hosting events in destina-tion areas and identifies the key transport considerations for event organisers and desti-nation managers. The framework will also aidthe evaluation of planning and policy optionsand will help identify best practice. The paperbegins with an analysis of the key event trans-port issues before going on to discuss a pro-posed conceptual framework. It concludes bypreparing the ground for further analysis bysuggesting how the framework can be appliedin future work.

EVENT TRANSPORT ISSUES

Transport is a derived demand. It is rarely con-sumed for its own sake but instead as a meansto an end (Cole, 2005). When the purpose oftravel is to attend an event, then the demand fortravel is heavily constrained both in time andspace. Visitors share a common location andvery similar optimal times of travel. Theimpacts of the peak period of transport demandcreated by an event are profound. An inabilityto provide additional capacity to meet peaks in

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCHInt. J. Tourism Res. 9, 303–314 (2007)Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.639

Planning Transport for Special Events: A Conceptual Framework and FutureAgenda for ResearchDerek Robbins*, Janet Dickinson and Steven CalverSchool of Services Management, Bournemouth University, Dorset, UK

*Correspondence to: D. Robbins, School of Services Management, Bournemouth University, Dorset BH125BB, UK.E-mail: [email protected]

demand for very short periods is the corefeature of many transport dilemmas andapplies equally to private transport by car andto public transport operators. The provision of additional capacity to meet peak levels ofdemand, whether that be additional infrastruc-ture capacity such as road capacity, or opera-tional policy such as additional vehicles toincrease public transport capacity, may result inthe underutilisation of that capacity for theremainder of the year and is therefore econom-ically unviable. Failure to meet temporaryshort-term peaks results in congestion andovercrowding. The UK outdoor music festivalat Glastonbury provides an acute example ofthis, where vehicles can take over seven hoursto exit the site at peak times (Glastonbury Festival, 2006). There are also documentedexamples of similar impacts in urban areas, pre-dominantly citing sporting events. Congestionat the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff for soccercup finals are well documented (BBC News,2002) and a Hamburg versus Valencia footballmatch at the Hamburg Stadium in Germanyexperienced traffic jams up to six hours prior tokick-off and overloaded trains resulted in somesupporters missing the match start. On depar-ture, poor management of pedestrian flows ledto many people missing trains (Zinkler, 2005).

Transport impacts can be also apparent inother more unusual ways. For instance, duringthe Sydney Olympics, a large number of navi-gational restrictions were placed on SydneyHarbour (Widmer and Underwood, 2004).Studies of recreational boat traffic during thisperiod showed that, contrary to expectations,there was not a widespread increase in boattraffic during the event, although Widmer andUnderwood (2004) suggest this may be due tolocal people avoiding the area, which highlightsan important recreational displacement issue.

Analysis of tourism statistics shows the car dominates UK domestic tourism travel,accounting for around 71% of all trips to andfrom holiday destinations (UKTS, 2004). Thecar share is at its highest for shorter trips,shorter stays and for rural destinations,accounting for 82% of day visits to rural areasand 91% of day trips to National Parks(Natural England, 2006). A similar patternemerges for events where the length of staytends to be short. Events in rural areas demon-

strate a much greater modal share by car thanthose held in urban areas. For instance 94% ofvisitors to the Sidmouth Folk festival arrive bycar (Mason and Beaumont-Kerridge, 2004).Data collected by the authors of occasionalvenues for open-air popular music concerts inDorset and Hampshire (UK) over the last threeyears demonstrate that most are dependent oncar access. High car shares create significantnegative environmental impacts to host desti-nation communities, especially in rural areas,where the road infrastructure is not designedto cope with high flows. The promoters of theGlastonbury festival note ‘the extra car trafficis one of the greatest impacts on the local area’(Glastonbury Festival, 2006). Similarly theimpact of car usage was a major issue raisedby residents and visitors alike to the SidmouthFolk festival, UK (Mason and Beaumont-Kerridge, 2004). Congestion, noise, visualintrusion and deterioration of local air qualityare all important externalities generated byhigh car shares.

One key reason why transport must take amuch more significant place in the events literature, and emerge as a focus for futureresearch, is the contribution it makes to green-house gas (GHG) emissions. The commitmentsto reduce emissions under the terms of theKyoto Protocol, the subsequent publication ofthe Stern report (2007), followed by the newambitious EU reduction targets of 20% below1990 levels by 2020, which were agreed uponin March 2007 (Financial Times, 2007), hasraised the stakes and increased Governmentfocus on climate change. A review of thetourism literature reveals a number of studiesto ascertain the transport contribution totourism’s GHG emissions (Høyer, 2000;Peeters and Schouten, 2005; Dubois and Ceron,2006). Transport emerges as the dominant contributor, accounting for between 40–60% of emissions in the Tyrol (Høyer, 2000) andbetween 50–75% of the total environmentalimpact of tourism across Europe (DG Enter-prise European Commission, 2004), dependingon a number of factors including average dis-tance travelled and mode of transport used.This high transport impact is particularlymarked for events. Some types of events suchas the large music festivals like Glastonbury,with a national (and even international)

304 D. Robbins, J. Dickinson and S. Calver

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Tourism Res. 9, 303–314 (2007)DOI: 10.1002/jtr

catchment, combine a long average distancetravelled, with a high car share, encouraged inpart by the need to carry luggage for camping.The relatively low carbon footprint fromaccommodation generates a transport impactat the top end of this range. Large ‘one day’events and concerts with a wide catchmentarea are also high on transport’s contributionto GHGs impacts.

There is an emerging theme in the transportfor tourism literature, investigating howtourism can continue to achieve economicgrowth while at the same time reducing itsGHG emissions. Whereas clearly a modal shiftaway from air and car is desirable, it is notalways practical, and one strategy to simulta-neously achieve economic and environmentalaims, without significant change in modalshift, is for visitors to travel less often but tostay longer. A reduction in the share of daytrips and shorter visits, to be replaced bylonger stays, will achieve a reduction in visitortrips without an accompanying reduction invisitor nights or visitor spending. This does ofcourse require a reversal of recent tourismtrends. However, the use of events by destina-tion managers to increase visitor numberstends to bring short-stay visitors, includinghigh shares of long-distance day trips, formany events. These are the very trips that con-tribute disproportionately high GHG emis-sions. The role of events as part of a moresustainable strategy for tourism growth is anessential area for future research. One study toaddress this aspect is a German study of ‘travelchains’ which aimed to influence the origin todestination trip to the Internationale Garten-bauausstellung, a horticultural exhibition inRostock (Schiefelbusch et al., 2007). The aimwas to even out the peak travel demand anddisperse tourism spending over the regionwith a combination of modal shift, additionaltrips to dispersed locations in the region andlonger stays.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK:TRANSPORT IMPLICATIONS OF HOLDINGSPECIAL EVENTS

To date, the existing body of event-relatedresearch is somewhat piecemeal and a knowl-edge base has yet to be systematically

developed (Faulkner et al., 2003). Most studiesconducted are descriptive, atheoretical andevent-specific — doing little to advance con-ceptual knowledge — and have limited appli-cation beyond the event studied. Many studiesare driven by the agendas of event organiserskeen to justify commercial sponsorship orpublic funding, and there is less political willto measure the longer term impacts, negativeeffects (Faulkner et al., 2003) and interrelation-ships between host impacts and the event(Barker et al., 2002). Thus impact studies tendto focus on pre-event analysis and on the prediction of the likely positive economic- and image-enhancement benefits while there is little post-event clarification of the actualimpacts that resulted. Ritchie’s work on theCalgary Olympics is a notable exception(Ritchie and Lyons, 1990; Ritchie and Smith,1991). The negative impacts and the unequaldistribution of benefits are far less commonlyexplored (Hiller, 1998). Furthermore, researchinto stakeholder agendas, organisationalframeworks and strategic activities behindevents is underdeveloped (O’Brien, 2006).Whereas studies have successfully describedevent impacts, there has been little workassessing potential leveraging strategies tomaximise and extend the positive impacts. Tothis end there have been calls for an eventsevaluation framework (Carlsen et al., 2000), asit has been difficult to learn lessons from thepast on the most effective mechanisms to maximise benefits. In this respect, Weed (2005)highlights Bernard Forsher’s concern that thedevelopment of social science knowledge wasrandom, and has produced many studies thatwere simply thrown onto a pile of researchwithout any consideration into how the bodyof knowledge could be constructed.

The rationale for the paper is to prepare theground for a more systematic construction ofknowledge on event research related to trans-port. The aim is to analyse transport implica-tions highlighted in research to date, and tosituate this in a conceptual framework thatprovides a basis on which to build futureresearch. There are many different aspects tothe study of transport to and from events, andFigure 1 outlines a conceptual framework for examining the transport implications ofholding special events. At the centre of the

Planning Transport for Special Events 305


framework lies the impact of the travel toevents at a destination-specific and wider arealevel. Surrounding this are four elements ofevents and destinations that significantly in-fluence the likely transport impacts on, or benefits to, a destination area. Each of theseelements is discussed in turn below.

The transport impact of events

First, although the literature generally citestransport as the cause of many negativeimpacts surrounding events, there is the poten-tial for positive benefits. New infrastructuremay be developed and event visitors mayembrace positive experiences of public trans-port outside their normal day-to-day travelpractices (discussed later). It is also importantto recognise that although the literature tendsto focus on the impacts in the geographical

vicinity of events, there are also more wide-spread impacts.

To begin with the impacts local to the eventare discussed. There are three time periodsover which transport has to be considered,although this is dependent on the size andnature of the event.

(i) Pre-event planning. The degree of pre-eventplanning is variable, dependent, of course, onthe size and nature of events. For relativelysmall events this may be small scale, such asthe identification and allocation of a suitablesite for additional temporary car parking,through to more significant contributions such as additional public transport services.Mega-events such as Olympic Games requirevery significant infrastructure enhancementplanned over a long period of time (see Tables1 and 2). While infrastructure development is



Destination impactsand benefits

EconomicPhysical/environmentalSocio-culturalImage/ regeneration

Pre eventTiming

Post event

Legacy

Wider impacts andbenefits

Physical/environmentalissues on infrastructureoutside destination areaand including GHGemissions

Event typology

TypeSizeFrequencyLengthTiming

Eventdestinationgeography

Eventdestinationorganisationalissues

Event/ tourism practices

During event

Figure 1. A conceptual framework for examining the transport implications of holding special events.

clearly informed by the wider transport plan-ning and logistics literature, there has beenlittle research to address how such infrastruc-ture effects travel practices to events and subsequent travel behaviour following new ornovel experiences in the event-visit context.

(ii) During. The performance of transport mea-sures are monitored during the event andincorporate issues such as modal split, capac-ity and congestion (Hensher and Brewer, 2002).Monitoring of the Manchester Commonwealthgames shows 80% of spectators at the mainSportscity venues used some form of publictransport (Howcroft and Newton, 2003). Thisexceeded event-planning targets. It is theduring event transport impacts that are com-monly mentioned in event impact studies andthe focus lies in addressing these at a destina-tion level.

(iii) Post-event. For a small minority of mega-events, where there has been major infra-structure enhancement, there are significanttransport legacies post-event (Coutroubas etal., 2003) (see Tables 1 and 2). There has beenlimited analysis of the subsequent use of, andsuccess of, such transport legacies in the academic literature.

Transport impacts beyond the immediatevicinity of events are largely ignored. This wasalso the case in tourism literature until rela-tively recently, as sustainable tourism focusedon analysis of on-site activities and environ-mental issues (Høyer, 2000). Thus, much of thetourism literature focuses on the transportimpacts in the destination area (Dickinson and Robbins, 2007) and the limited studies ofevents transport focus solely on the transportimpacts around the event site itself (Howcroftand Newton, 2003). Therefore, there is a



Table 1. Athens transport legacy — summary. Source: Coutroubas et al.(2003)

Road infrastructure • 120km of new, modern roads• 90km of upgraded roads• 40 flyovers• Parking lots in central locations

Public transport infrastructure • 7.7km new metro lines• 23.7 Tram network• 32km Suburban Railway• New and upgraded train stations

Mixed • A new, ultra-modern TrafficManagement Centre

Table 2. Beijing transport legacy — summary. Source: BOCOG, 2008

Public transport infrastructure • Completion of eight subway lines — linking the airport, commuter suburbs and the nearby towns of Bawangfen and Tongzhou.

• The 300km of new and redeveloped rail network will have an annual capacity increase from 1.8 to 2.2 billion per year.

• An increase in bus fleets for the Olympics will leave 650 routes with a total carrying capacity of 4.5 billion. Part of the plan to move people out of cars and onto public transport.

Mixed public transport and road • Expansion of highways and railways that link Beijing to other major infrastructure cities.

Other • Taxis to be developed into modern, high efficiency cars. Medium-and-high cars will make up 70% of total taxis used in the city with 70% using cleaned fuel.

tendency for studies to focus on the impacts oftoo many cars in sensitive destination envi-ronments, where the impacts of congestion areclear. All tourism trips involve a longer originand destination trip, so the impact of tourismtrips are spread over a much wider area, andthis particularly applies to event travel withthe associated constraint of a common desiredtime of arrival. Reference has already beenmade to the contribution of travel to GHGemissions, which is predominantly a functionof the origin to destination journey (Robbinsand Dickinson, 2007). However, in addition,high traffic flows to destinations can result incongestion, accidents and other externalitieson roads or motorways well away from theevent location, and these impacts are largelyignored by the literature.

Transport can therefore be conceptualised asbringing a variety of impacts, but also poten-tially leveraging various benefits such as theability to influence future transport behaviourthrough the provision of new infrastructure,and providing an opportunity for people to tryout alternatives to the car.

Event destination geography

The location of an event is a significant con-tributor to modal choice and local impact.Urban locations have the most developedpublic transport infrastructure, with the mostcomprehensive networks in the largest citieswhere a combination of population size anddensity justify high frequency bus services on main routes, light rapid transit systems,tube/subway systems and even traditionallocal heavy rail systems. Not surprisingly,these locations attract the largest public trans-port shares for leisure and tourism trips, withLondon displaying the highest share in the UK(Department for Transport, 2005). While thereis a relative paucity of specific case studies tomeasure public transport shares for events in urban areas, it is clear from a combinationof anecdotal evidence and observation thatpublic transport dominates travel to one-dayconcerts in Hyde Park, London, whereassimilar events in more rural areas are domi-nated by car travel. For instance ‘The Who’played a series of open air concerts in the UKduring the summer of 2006 including Hyde

Park and Beaulieu stately home in Hampshire.The same event in different locations producedboth car-dominated and public transport-dominated patterns.

Festivals and events take place in a widevariety of temporary and permanent settings.This is illustrated by ‘open-air’ concerts andmusic festivals held at temporary locations(Glastonbury and Reading in the UK), tempo-rary stages at established tourism locations(Knebworth and Beaulieu historic houses andparks in the UK), to one-off concerts at perma-nent locations such as sports stadia. The lattertend to have the most developed public trans-port infrastructure and the larger stadia, suchas the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales,have also developed elaborate access strate-gies, such as park and ride, for major sportingevents. These plans can be relatively easilyactivated for other types of events hosted bythe stadium. However, even permanent urbanlocations can have problems catering forevents. Fans attending a U2 concert held at theQueensland Sports and Athletics Centre inBrisbane, Australia in 2006 were subject to longqueues and delays due to inadequate bus pro-vision to the venue (News.com.au, 2006).

The most difficult events to accommodate orplan for are those using temporary siteslocated in rural areas. This is a popular choicefor the rock/pop festival genre, no doubtdating back to the cultural influences of the1960s and most specifically what the authorswould term the ‘Woodstock’ effect. Realisti-cally, festivals such as Glastonbury havebecome a permanent fixture in the cultural cal-endar and they are attempting to reduce theirenvironmental impact by developing lift-shareschemes using the festival website. O’Neill(2006) estimated 15000 car trips were saved in2006, although the basis for this calculation isfar from clear and seems wildly optimistic.Assuming 61% of 140000 festival goers arearriving by car (based on O’Neill, 2006) withan estimated two to three persons per car, (theNational Travel Survey NTS shows an averageload factor of 2.3 persons per car for leisurepurposes; see Department for Transport, 2005),the festival attracts in total between 28500 to42700 cars. Furthermore, it is far form clearhow many of those making use of a car shareactually had a car available for their own



journey. For some, alternative travel to the fes-tival would have been by public transport,thus inflating the ‘car trips saved’ figure. Fur-thermore, such schemes are merely ‘fire fight-ing’ the implications of holding a major festivalin a wholly inappropriate site from an envi-ronmental point of view. The most desirablefestival and event locations for transport plan-ners are permanent (stadia) in urban locationswith good public transport links including,ideally, rail links.

Event typology

Different types of events attract very differentprofiles of visitors. Studies of visitors to the UK Country Landowners Association’s annualevent demonstrate an over-representation ofolder visitors in marked contrast to theyounger profile of visitors to music festivals.Factors such as the socio-economic profile,income and, most influentially, age of cus-tomers will influence levels of car ownership,and even the legal entitlement to drive. Thispartly explains why the percentage of arrivalsat music festivals in rural areas by car,although high, is below 70%.

The problems of transport planning forevents are, to a very great extent, exacerbatedby the combination of the very short durationof the event combined with its infrequency(often annual or even biannual). Even verylarge-scale festival events such as Glastonburycannot justify, either on economic or environ-mental grounds, permanent infrastructureenhancement such as new public transportfacilities or road construction, with the excep-tion of the largest mega-events. Howeverevents held on a regular cyclical pattern areable to learn from previous experience anddevelop temporary strategies to meet thedemand, including additional parking, andtraffic controls such as road closures and one-way systems to maximise traffic flow to the fes-tival site. ‘First-time’ or ‘one-off’ events haveno such advantage. They can benefit fromexperience elsewhere, although in some casesthis is limited to where local conditions may besignificantly different, and are potentially thegreatest beneficiaries from the development ofbest practice.

While as a general rule, the frequency ofevents negates the viability of developing spe-cific infrastructure, the very largest mega-events such as the Olympic Games, SoccerWorld Cups and Commonwealth Gamesattract larger visitor numbers over a longertime period — traditionally in the order ofthree weeks — and justify large-scale infra-structure development. Although cyclical innature, such events are ‘one-off’ events for thespecific location. There is an expanding litera-ture on the mode of transport used to attendsuch events (Hensher and Brewer, 2002), andalso the planning for and the transport legacyleft by hosting one of these mega-events(Coutroubas et al., 2003). Table 1 shows thetransport legacy from the Athens OlympicGames whereas Table 2 shows the plannedtransport infrastructure, much of it alreadycompleted, for the next Olympics in Beijing,2008. At Beijing, the focus has moved moretowards public transport.

Evidence from the Commonwealth Gamesin Manchester in 2002 (Howcroft and Newton,2003) and the World Cup in Germany in 2006demonstrate that that strategies include tem-porary measures, such as additional frequen-cies to bus services, new services and routesand park and ride schemes. The Howcroft andNewton (2003) case study of the Manchestergames illustrates that special measures forevents can generate significant operationalexpense without any permanent addition tothe infrastructure (Table 3).



Table 3. Manchester Commonwealth Games trans-port strategy. Source: Howcroft and Newton, 2003

Strategy Cost (in millions of £)

7000 Park and ride spaces 0.37(three sites)

9000 Park and walk spacesEnhanced public transport 1.61Dedicated shuttle bus 0.42

serviceTraffic management 1.40

schemesCommunications 0.28

Total cost 4.08

The timing of events is also a crucial factor.For example, the growth and emergence ofmarathons, half marathons and fun runs incor-porate significant numbers of participants aswell as spectators. Observations made by theauthors within the ‘running community’ indi-cate that insufficient consideration is oftengiven to their access, particularly for the large-scale events such as the London Marathon.First, events tend to be held on Sundays, alogical option in terms of available leisure time,but also when public transport services operateless frequently and when heavy rail servicesare most susceptible to disruption, particularlyfrom engineering works. Furthermore thereport time for runners is early in the morning,making public transport use difficult and attimes impossible where the required reporttime is before the first bus or train arrival. Thereare many operational reasons for an early start,not least to avoid many athletes running overthe hottest part of the day, and these clearlytake precedence over access. Nevertheless, participants’ options are severely restricted,and even when they arrive on the previous day, their access to the start point is oftenlimited. In the case of the London Marathon,additional trains run from Central London to the start venue, however, access to CentralLondon is limited early on a Sunday morning.

Event/destination organisational issues

The UK regulatory and legislative frame-work requires events to be licensed by localauthorities. Festival and event promoters andpro-event local politicians quite naturallyunderstate or downplay the negative transportimpacts which otherwise may be detrimental totheir licence application (Mason and Beaumont-Kerridge, 2004). However, the research agendarequires a much more open and robust analysisof the transport impacts, to assist understand-ing and contribute to the development andsharing of best practice. Also, as discussedearlier, the wider impacts of transport, beyondthe immediate event or destination locality,have been widely ignored. A perspective per-vades that these wider transport issues arebeyond the event or destination remit. Just assustainable tourism in New Zealand fails to

take into account the impact of travel to New Zealand (Becken, 2004), in an events con-text the wider travel implications are seen assomeone else’s problem — something to betackled at a governmental and highways agencylevel. This is a typical representation of thetransport dilemma where the need to take action is seen to lie elsewhere (Dickinson andDickinson, 2006; Dickinson and Robbins, 2007).An important topic for further research is to gainan understanding of event organisationalagendas and priorities in respect to transportand the decision-making process.

Event tourism practices

People develop norms and expectations ofhow they travel to particular destinations andevents. For instance, if travelling to an event inBarcelona (Spain) from Britain, it would be thenorm to fly, while to attend a rugby interna-tional at Twickenham (London), many peoplewould consider using the train even if they arenot normally regular public transport users. Toa large extent these norms and expectationsguide, constrain and enable particular travelbehaviours. Indeed, a positive feature of travelto some events is the opportunities created fornew practices and behaviour. For instance, in certain circumstances it introduces publictransport to car drivers previously resistant toit, possibly for the first time in many years.Monitoring of the Manchester CommonwealthGames revealed that 68% of shuttle bus userswere infrequent bus users (used buses lessthan once every three months), and of these,59% came from households with two or morecars. Furthermore, 97% of users had a positiveattitude to the bus service, perhaps suggestingmany will make more use of bus services in the future (Howcroft and Newton, 2003).Haimayer (cited in Høyer, 2000, p. 158) states‘we need to be taught how to drive by drivingpractice. Maybe we’ll have to do “practicetravelling” on our holidays to learn otherforms of mobility’. However, Hensher andBrewer (2002) argue that people behave differ-ently under special circumstances and that theuse of such services to access large-scale eventscan be seen as short-term coping strategieswhich generally do not translate into long-term behavioural change. Thus, there is scope



to explore travel practices and expectations forparticular events and destinations, as some arelikely to be more conducive to more environ-mentally benign modes of travel. Also, there ispotential to explore event-travel practices inthe wider context of societal norms and expec-tation, to analyse how experiences of alterna-tives to the car in an event context, may or maynot, affect modal shift.

CONCLUSION

Transport and access to events remains a minorplanning consideration for many event pro-moters. Destination areas host events for avariety of reasons, including extending sea-sonality, destination brand awareness anddiversification through promotion of the desti-nation to a new audience. The growth in thenumber of events has, to date, been piecemealand opportunistic, with both destinations andevent venues, from stadia to stately homes,seeking economic benefits. If events and festi-vals are going to make their rightful contribu-tion to a sustainable tourism growth, then thetransport to and from those events has to takea much more central role in the planning, exe-cution and regulation of those events.

Clearly, some large-scale events have ac-quired status to occupy a central place in thecultural identity. For instance, in the UK in2007 the Reading and Leeds music festivalssold out in 90 minutes and 140000 Glastonburytickets sold out in a matter of hours on Sunday,1 April (BBC News, 2007). Although theauthors would challenge the suitability of thelocation of many such festivals and events,they are clearly established. However, as thenumber of events, both large and small, con-tinues to grow as new venues join the annualsummer round of events and open-air con-certs, there is a real opportunity to integrate

transport into the planning and regulation ofnew events and venues.

This paper has presented a conceptualframework to facilitate more coherent study ofevent travel impacts (Figure 1). Table 4 hasbeen developed as a template of the mostdesirable components for an event from atransport viewpoint. This provides a startingpoint to rank and assess locations for eventsand inform the planning and the regulatorylicensing process. There will be compromises.Ideally access to events by car or by publictransport is facilitated by holding the eventwhen there is spare transport capacity, and yetthe timing of many events must take intoaccount other factors. For instance, open-airevents must take into account climatic factorsand will predominantly be a summer activity.Furthermore the framework needs to be in-formed by a continuing process of research.

The transport impacts at the core of theframework are relatively well understood, butfurther research is required to analyse how thefour elements of events and destinations influ-ence the impacts on, or benefits to, a destina-tion area. Additional studies are required toascertain the current modal shares for manymore types of events in a variety of locations.To date, such studies have tended to berestricted to mega-events requiring specifictransport infrastructure. Studies need toexamine smaller events to develop a body ofknowledge and provide case studies in avariety of settings so that best practice mightbe informed by this additional descriptivedata. Much might be accomplished by quanti-tative survey or structured observation. Suchresearch is needed to map out critical issuesrelated to event typology and destinationgeography to aid planning decisions.

This research needs to be supplemented by qualitative research to understand more



Table 4. Template of where and when is it best to host events from a transport perspective. Source: the authors

• Where there is previous experience of holding events.• Where transport infrastructure exists (more likely urban rather than rural locations).• Where there are already positive practices of using alternatives to the car or where such practices might

be developed (for example, park and ride schemes).• Where there is potential for longer stays — so visitors may stay beyond the duration of the event.• When other traffic flows are low (both day of week and seasonal flows).• When public transport systems operate at their optimum (avoid Sundays).

clearly the existing travel practices and societalexpectations of travel to events in order toidentify the policy options most likely to in-fluence modal choice. Studies of attitudestowards transport and subsequent behaviourare fraught with the dilemmas held by indi-viduals. Qualitative approaches are muchbetter able to unravel the contradictory per-spectives and underlying arguments and thusoffer further insight into the modal choice ofattenders. Future studies should employ in-depth interviewing and ethnographic studies,perhaps making use of Internet-based re-sources such as blogs and discussion forums,to offer new insight into the experiences ofevent travel. Studies might also focus on howand why travel practices arise and are perpet-uated by the actions of government, destina-tion managers and event organisers. Work isneeded in a variety of cultural contexts astravel practices differ not just in relation to thedestination context but also in terms of the cul-tural reference point of visitors and residents.

Discourse analysis as both a methodologicalapproach and research perspective will pro-vide a critical framework that has, to date, notbeen applied in the transport field. Applied discourse analysis has been used successfullyto understand behaviour in relation to otherenvironmental problems (see for example,Kurz et al., 2005 on energy and water use) andcan demonstrate how particular discourseshelp reinforce certain practices or at least enablethem to remain unchallenged (Kurz et al., 2005).There is still much merit in quantitative surveysof event attendees, but it is essential that theunderlying problems of assessing transportviews using scale items are recognised. Wherethere are strong social norms that people adhereto it is unlikely that attitude scales will do morethan reinforce these. There are also more induc-tive approaches available to quantitativeresearchers, such as sorting tasks and inductiveanalysis strategies such as cluster analysis andcorrespondence analysis, that are worthy ofconsideration.

There are ultimately many constraints thathave limited event research in general and,specifically, that related to transport. Foremostis the one-off nature of events giving limitedopportunity to access participants or to makeobservations — evidence has often been anec-

dotal or reported in the press following theevent. This is potentially a greater limitationfor qualitative research where, ideally, datacollection and analysis are part of an ongo-ing reflective process requiring an iterativeapproach. There is also more impetus fororganisers and funding agencies to fund pre-dictive economic impacts studies rather thanfocus on potentially negative transport issues.Thus a limiting factor is likely to be lack ofresearch funding. Furthermore, most eventtransport research has focused on large-scaleevents and funding is likely to be much lessforthcoming for small-scale events where thereis a need for more work. Much work needs tobe done to convince funding organisations thattravel for events, and to a large extent fortourism more widely, is worthy of support.

This paper serves the purpose of bothinforming future research directions andraising the profile of transport and access in theevent-planning process. Events will continueto grow in number and with the increasedfocus on sustainable development and climatechange, transport planning must clearly fea-ture much more prominently, particularly inthe future planning as well as operation ofevents. This paper proposes a template to iden-tify locations for events which will reduce theirimpact together with an agenda for futureresearch, to inform the development of thistemplate.

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planning transport for special events: a conceptual framework and future agenda for research

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