IRO South East Olympics Talk
With a year to go until the Olympics, the IRO South East welcomed a lively and stimulating presentation provided by Paul Ellis, Network Rail’s Programme Manager – 2012 Readiness, alongside Angie Doll, Commercial Manager at Southeastern. It’s no secret that the 2012 Olympics pose an exceptionally demanding set of operational strains on the South East. On 11th July we heard about some of the instrumental areas of preparation in place from Network Rail and Southeastern and many other affected organisations.
The pressure of phenomenal additional demand requires exigent forethought into passenger access routes, infrastructure maintenance and passenger information, coordination of service providers, crowd movement and capacity provision in rolling stock and also luggage facilities and frontline staffing.
Paul Ellis explained the taxing schedule of maintenance already underway, due to culminate in ‘gold plated’ routes, forbidding possessions. Other areas will have minimal, non-intrusive maintenance alongside enhanced response activity while the games are underway.
The 2012 Journey Planner is set to aid customers, providing guidance not just to those unfamiliar with the particular routes but also those unfamiliar with public transport. Maintaining good passenger information could help encourage them to use public transport in future.
Unlocking capacity at St Pancras to enable 12tph and 12 car formation, safely moving crowds through and out of the station is no easy task. Assisted by 600 volunteers, St Pancras recently underwent a Javelin test trip – the insightful day proved helpful to steer on-going plans.
Coordinating the communications between operators as a ‘two-way filter’ will be a Transport Coordination Centre, serving to strengthen existing operating techniques and plans.
To maintain familiarity for customers and staff alike, the philosophical approach of the Olympics readiness planning has been to stick to the existing services wherever possible. At Venue Hubs, such as Deptford, Maze Hill and Woolwich Dockyard consideration will be made for grey space – the domain between the ‘territory’ of one organisation and another. In addition to providing information for them to plan ahead; we also need to guide passengers in, around and between transport venues and services.
Angie Doll described the approach that operators, emergency services and other groups are taking to minimise disruption during the unprecedented levels of demand as a collective sense of the necessity to work together. However, she added that while all we can do is forecast and no guarantees are available, a much clearer picture of passenger numbers will be available once all event ticket sales are finalised.
Many thanks to Paul Ellis and Angie Doll for sharing with us an outline of the hard work in planning and preparing for the 2012 Olympics. What promises to be a marathon logistical challenge will indeed require, in its truest sense, a great deal of cooperation.