"Queen St Should Have Been Closed" - Logistics Expert

A University of Auckland Business School logistics expert says Queen St should have been largely closed to traffic during Friday night’s Rugby World Cup CBD opening celebrations in order to cope with potentially vast crowds.

Professor Tava Olsen, with the School’s Department of Information Systems and Operations Management, says closing the main street – with major intersections able to be used with strict control – could have eased the crowding that caused huge traffic and logistics problems.

Risk and contingency plans, which appeared not to have been thought-out properly, meant that the council’s plans were not based on ‘best-case attendance’, she says, making Friday’s transport failures a fait accompli.

And whilst much of the night’s celebrations were very successful, the risk of transport failure happening again is high if the council does not analyse its risks and go with ‘best-case’ projections for future events, she says.

“Basic capacity and utilisation calculations are subjects we teach our students thoroughly, and they are very critical in planning for large events,” Professor Olsen says.

“A basic calculation on projected crowds – maybe a small phone sample or the council asking its own staff to report back on whether friends and family were intending to go – together with a worse-case analysis and capacity projections could have led to the conclusion that they needed to close more roads and attempt to avoid the bus/pedestrian collision.

“I would be surprised to learn that anyone did a basic back-of-the-envelope calculation on utilisation, either for people space downtown or for the trains, and it’s really not that hard to do.

“In hindsight, Queen St should have been closed except perhaps at major intersections, and game attendees could then have been directed away from Britomart and up Queen St to either buses or the very successful Fan Trail they have to Eden Park.”

Professor Olsen says the council needed to take a leaf from major RWC sponsor Heineken. “DB isn’t producing Heineken to expected demand...it’s producing it to ‘best-case’ demand because they want to be absolutely sure they don’t run out.

“The council could learn from the way major corporations do their planning and risk assessments.”