People Flow in Precincts – The Making of Place
Cameron MacDonald & Simon Owen
GHD, Victoria
This presentation was delivered at the 2021 Online Conference Series and until October 2022 is only available to registered delegates and Content Access Pass holders via Interchange. For information on accessing this and other presentations please review the Content Access Pass options.
ABSTRACT
A “place-based” approach to the planning, design, delivery, and operation of transport networks recognises the network of public spaces formed by roads and streets, the spaces they adjoin and impact, and the experience of the user. Nationally, movement and place frameworks are informing the creation of places with an appropriate balance of movement requirements and place amenity, and precinct development around railway stations, sporting and cultural venues has recently transformed both the Adelaide Riverbank and Perth Stadium Park, and are a primary focus of current planning for Sydney Metro West, Melbourne Airport Rail Link and Suburban Rail Loop and Brisbane Cross River Rail.
The Cross River Rail Delivery Authority, in conjunction with the Brisbane City Council (BCC), has developed a framework that has informed the vision for the urban context around each of the Cross River Rail precincts and provided three themes that have informed precinct planning – sharing knowledge and best practice, moving people around and creating great places.
Insights have been leveraged from exemplar global precincts where connectivity has been identified as both an enabler and as a ‘city shaping lever’ with enhanced movement and experience for pedestrians and cyclists around the precincts promoting connectivity of people and places, and driving greater economic and liveability returns.
Movement Strategies, the largest and leading specialist people flow consultancy in the world, which recently joined the GHD group, is helping to bring the sought experience to describe global best practice in creating great precincts and their role in shaping cities.
Wembley Stadium, which sits at the heart of Wembley Park, is used over 40 times a year, and the key challenge has been to ensure that the emerging designs, facilities and construction activities safeguard the visitor experience; delivering capacity safety and ease of movement between the Park venues and each of Wembley Park Underground Station and the Wembley Stadium and Wembley Central Network Rail Stations.
Movement Strategies was commissioned to provide support across a wide range of design and operation workstreams associated with the 85-acre masterplan of residential and leisure development around Wembley Stadium that has transformed Wembley Park into North West London’s newest cultural neighbourhood.
This work delivered site-wide movement surveys, pedestrian flow analysis and congestion modelling, as well as detailed simulations of crowd movement across the site (90,000+ users). Through iterative design and operations planning considerations, this work served to mitigate the significant amount of reputational risk associated with visitors being inconvenienced during an event at Wembley and ensure the safety of crowds across a range of scenarios.
Author
Cameron MacDonald | GHD
Cameron MacDonald is the Australia and APAC leader of Movement Strategies, a GHD Company, with over 28 years of experience in transportation planning in Australia, Hong Kong, China, South East Asia, the Middle East and the UK. Cameron has Civil Engineering, Transport Planning and Human Factors qualifications with particular experience in people movement, informing transport infrastructure designs and masterplans including railway stations, sporting and entertainment precincts, cultural and civic spaces and transit oriented development with a skillset including traffic and pedestrian simulation modelling, public realm design, accessibility studies and public transport interchange design.
