Managing event mobility: what to control before, during and after

Planning sets what should happen; managing decides what you do when it does not. The difference shows up on event day, when the arrival of the audience stops being an estimate and becomes real vehicles on a real road.

The plan drifts for three reasons. The first is concentration: the audience arrives in a narrower window than the plan assumed, and that peak conditions everything else. The second is context: weather, roadworks, an accident on the access road or another event in the same city change behaviour within hours. The third is the knock-on effect: a late shuttle lengthens the queue, the queue delays entry and the delay puts more people in the same time slot.

• From the average to the peak. How many people arrive in total matters less than how many arrive in each quarter of an hour.
• From forecast to measurement. Every decision rests on a counter or a reading, not on an assumption.
• From document to team. Someone has to watch the data, someone has to decide and someone has to carry it out. If those three roles are not assigned, the decision arrives late.
• From fixed to reversible. Opening a lane, diverting traffic or sending an alert are actions you switch on and off as the peak evolves.

If you do not have the plan written yet, start with the guide to the event mobility plan. This guide assumes it exists and focuses on operating it.

Before the event you control what you can size and communicate: how many people arrive, from where, how, through which entrance and at what time. Each block needs an owner and a question that is closed before the gates open.

• Attendance forecast. Tickets sold, sales pace and the arrival curve by time slot. Compare it with previous editions and with similar events in the same area. The question to close: how many people arrive in the busiest hour?
• Audience origin. Postcodes from ticketing let you estimate distances and work out which roads each group will use. The onboard:earth guide (2024) suggests asking your ticket agent for the postcodes of the car park tickets sold.
• Modal split. What share arrives by car, public transport, shuttle, on foot or by bike. It is the most important assumption in the plan. Validate it with data from the previous edition or with a survey of ticket buyers (there is a mobility survey template).
• Access points. Capacity of each access in vehicles per hour and people per hour, control points, signage, alternative routes and a lane reserved for emergency vehicles.
• Parking. Genuinely usable spaces, reserve areas, internal circulation and what you do with the cars that do not fit. To size it, see the guide on how many parking spaces an event needs and the parking spaces calculator.
• Public and collective transport. Contracted frequencies, real capacity of each vehicle, stops and terminus, and a direct contact at the operator on event day.
• Carpooling. Incentives so that cars arrive full. The onboard:earth guide (2024) lists priority parking or early entry for full cars among the measures that have worked.
• Communication. A how-to-get-there message at purchase and in the pre-event email, and an alert plan for the day (website, social media, signage, public address). According to the same guide, the best results in encouraging more sustainable travel come at the point of ticket sale.
• Briefing and drill. A meeting with every team to go through the protocol, the map and the contacts, and a tabletop drill with questions such as “what do we do if the car park fills up at 8:00 pm?”.

During the event you measure seven quantities: vehicles per hour, people per hour, car park occupancy, access saturation, queue time, incidents and weather. Whoever decides must be able to read all of them in under a minute.

• Vehicles per hour. At each access point, in 15-minute intervals. Obtained from a count by volunteers or from a counter or camera if the venue has one. Compare them with the forecast curve.
• People per hour. At the gates and at collective transport stops. At the gates, from access control readings; at stops, by manual count.
• Car park occupancy. Occupied spaces per zone (entries minus exits) and, above all, the filling rate in spaces per minute. A single percentage says less than how long is left until the limit.
• Access saturation. The ratio between the vehicles or people arriving and what the access point can process. The signal is a queue that does not clear from one interval to the next.
• Queue time. Measure it, do not estimate it: time a sample vehicle or person from the end of the queue to the checkpoint. Time translates into a decision; metres of queue translate less well.
• Incidents. A log with time, place, type, owner and status. It is the basis of the post-event report.
• Weather. Forecast and radar, with one person assigned to watch them and warn the coordinator before conditions change.

A simple control centre is a table, a communication channel and a list of who decides what. You do not need a room full of screens. You need information to reach one person with authority, and that person’s decision to reach the field in minutes.

The decision rule is simple. The lead for each zone decides within their protocol. The coordinator decides when a measure affects two areas. Production management decides closures, delayed openings and any cancellation. Also define who stands in for each role if it fails.

1. 1

   Assign roles and deputies

   One name per role and one deputy per role. Write it on a one-page sheet with phone numbers and radio channels.

2. 2

   Choose a main channel and a backup

   Radio for the field and phone for coordination with management and authorities. Define what goes through each channel so neither is overloaded.

3. 3

   Place the measurement points

   Decide where vehicles are counted, where queue time is measured and who logs the readings every 15 minutes.

4. 4

   Write the protocol with thresholds

   For each trigger, one action and one owner. Use the table in the next section as a starting point.

5. 5

   Run the briefing and the drill

   Bring all teams together and walk through three or four scenarios out loud. Adjust thresholds and task allocation with what comes out.

6. 6

   Open the log before the gates

   Start recording readings and decisions before the first attendee arrives. Today’s log is tomorrow’s report.

A threshold protocol turns a discussion into a lookup: when a reading crosses an agreed value, a pre-planned action is triggered. Each event defines its own thresholds, because they depend on its venue, its access points and how long each measure takes to have an effect.

To set a threshold, follow this reasoning:

• Start from the real capacity of each point (vehicles per hour, spaces, people per hour), measured or certified, not the theoretical one.
• Estimate how long each measure takes to be noticed from the moment it is ordered (opening a lane, opening a reserve area, sending an alert).
• Set the warning threshold so that whatever arrives during that reaction time still fits.
• Define two levels: warning (the measure is prepared) and activation (it is carried out).
• Validate the thresholds with local police and the transport operator, and readjust them after the drill.

To understand how a queue forms and what levers you have to clear it, read the guide on how to reduce traffic and queues at event access points.

After the event you measure the gap between what was forecast and what happened, so that the next edition is planned with your own data. Do it in the days that follow, while the team still remembers the decisions.

• Clearance time. From the end of the show until the last vehicle leaves the car park and the last passenger is served at the stops. By zone, not only in total.
• Actual occupancy. Occupied spaces per zone and time slot against the forecast, and use of the reserve area if it was opened.
• Actual modal split. From the post-event survey, parking or coach sales data and volunteer counts, as set out in the onboard:earth guide (2024).
• Incidents. What happened, when, what was decided, by whom and how long it took to resolve.
• Comparison with the forecast. Arrival curve, peak, occupancy and queue times. Note where it deviated and why.
• Attendee experience. How long it took them to arrive and leave and what they thought of it, in the same survey.

The mobility report fits in a few pages: executive summary, forecast versus outcome, incidents and decisions taken, lessons learned and specific changes for the next edition or date. Share it with those who helped you operate: the council, local police and transport operators.

A minimum mobility dashboard fits on one screen and holds eight indicators, each tied to a decision. If an indicator enables no decision, it does not go in.

An example with hypothetical figures shows how readings, thresholds and decisions chain together during the arrival peak. It does not describe any real event.

Note that real demand exceeded the forecast by 15% and the plan held because it had margin prepared: a second checkpoint, a reserve area and one owner per decision. If your forecast has no cushion, the first deviation forces you to improvise.

Coordinating with the authorities and operators before the event avoids your first contact being an incident. What to share and how far in advance depends on each council and region, so always ask about their requirements and deadlines.

The most frequent mistakes are organisational: nobody measures, nobody decides or nobody has rehearsed. These are the ones that come up most.

• Measuring without a threshold. Having counters and not knowing at what value to act. The data stays on a screen.
• Setting thresholds on the day. A threshold decided under pressure arrives late. Define it and rehearse it beforehand.
• Watching only the car park. The queue starts on the access road and at the venue entrance, not only at the parking spaces.
• A single channel with no backup. If the radio fails or gets overloaded, the control centre goes blind. Define an alternative channel.
• Decisions with no owner. When a committee decides, the decision takes time. Each action needs a name.
• Communicating only at the gate. The useful alert reaches people before they leave home, at purchase and in the pre-event email.
• Forgetting the exit. Planning the arrival and leaving the exit to chance. Clearing the venue also needs a protocol and measurement.
• Not coordinating with local police and operators. If the first contact is an incident, the response is worse.
• Not keeping the data. Without a log there is no report, and every edition starts from scratch.

To see how demand is split across modes and what options you have, read the guide on attendee transport for events.

VIB3S is the carpooling solution for events that we recommend for the hardest part of mobility to control: car trips that arrive from many origins and coincide in the same time window.

Attendees share a car with people going to the same event, through the free app (iOS and Android) or through a web widget that plugs into your website, ticketing or emails with one line of code, with nothing to download. VIB3S builds your event’s community and has it ready in under 24 hours. The driver splits the real cost of the trip (fuel and tolls).

For your control centre, VIB3S provides this carpooling data:

• The audience’s geographic origin.
• Arrival and departure time slots and the routes with the most demand.
• Average occupancy per vehicle and shared kilometres.
• Cars avoided and CO₂ calculated and validated on completed trips.