Subscribe to RSSRWC Chief: Transport Will Be Right On The Night
Rugby World Cup CEO Martin Snedden today expressed optimism that transport issues won’t be a problem during the RWC games being played at Eden Park.
On TVONE’s Q&A this morning, he was asked if “access to Eden Park will not be a nightmare?”
He said a traffic management plan had been distributed last week.
“To the delight of all of the experts that have been working on it for a long time, (it) has received very strong support, what I can say is yes I think it will be fine for the tournament.
Previous night rugby crowds pour onto Kingsland station
PAUL HOLMES: “Martin, How can it not be a nightmare? It was a nightmare in previous tests when it had much less capacity.”
MARTIN: ” There’s a whole lot of work that is going into this tournament that hasn’t gone into previous events, and the upgrade of the Kingsland to Britomart Station, the traffic management plan, the upgrade of Eden Park which improves transport around it a lot, there’s a lot happening Paul that is different for Rugby World Cup, than has been the case in the past.”
A few weeks ago, there were assurances that the revamped Kingsland railway station will be ready in time for the All Blacks test with South Africa at Eden Park on July 10.
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The CEO said that 60,000 tourists were expected for the games.
Martin Sneddon said there would be 1.6 million tickets of games on sale and he expected 1.2 of those to be sold to New Zealanders.
That’s one in four of the population, although he said rugby fans would be buying multiples.
On prices he said: “The range goes from $1250 down to $15 and 25% of our total ticket pool is in the really low range. So we’ve deliberately set it up that there are prices there for everyone. Now 48 matches, 16 of them are expensive, 32 of them are not, so it’s just trying to strike that balance.”
Asked if he was worried about the growing interest in local soccer teams, he said :
“I live in Wellington and I’ve been absolutely heartened by what’s been happening with the All Whites there and Phoenix, because what I think it shows is that people are incredibly interested in the experience, and the Rugby World Cup experience is what I think will draw people to go and watch the matches here, even people that are not interested in Rugby.”
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7 Comments
Hmmm, he obviously hasn’t seen the Western line stats for February…
Can he honestly say one broken down train won’t cause chaos on a big game night, I can’t…
I’m also glad they have a traffic management plan for all those cars the tourists are bringing on the plane with them…
Any other city in the world as soon as the announcement was made would have made the following a priorities:
1). Build a new stadium in the CBD
2). Electrify the rail and purchase new rolling stock
3). Have integrated ticketing in place
I hold out little hope if my experiance today was anything to go by. After 3 weeks of having a carpark in the city while a friend was overseas I returned to the trains to chaos this morning when the train I caught from Ellerslie broke down.
Yes we have a problem when the trains break down (still a constant occurance) but its more the process and organisation on the platform once they get everyone out of the train.
Communication via the station loud speaker was constantly reminding the mainly school kids to step back from the yellow line, but no mention of when the next train was comming. Conductors wondered around just as lost as the passengers.
I seriously hope they have some sort of process in place that shows when things go wrong we are at least a little organised.
Andy.
@Andy Not a good day for you.
You summed up the problems well.
@Jeremy Logical thinking. You should have applied to be the supercity CEO!
Not qualified, I haven’t been peddling alcopops to children…
Look I was right, and the same issues were with lack of communication
Talk about digging up an old post.
However still highly relevant given Black Friday.
Although I do ask, have things changed now 18 months since the original post was made?