'Altoonative travel' encourage football fans to take public transport

Modern football stadia attract thousands of fans on match days. A recent survey of Newcastle United FC season ticket holders discovered that 54% come to the stadium on match by car, with 37% using public transport and only 7% choosing to walk.  This causes a number of issues including bottlenecks on key motorway junctions, congestion caused by cars looking for parking at an already busy time of the week and the associated local environmental problems.

Newcastle City Council is currently working closely with Newcastle United Football Club to change the way fans get to St James’ Park stadium. The Club’s return to the Premiership has heralded a brand new sustainable transport initiative – Altoonative Travel. The aim of Altoonative Travel is to encourage fans to make more use of public transport, cycling, walking and car-sharing to get to the game. It is a key part of the travel plan that is in place for the stadium.

St James’ Park has a Metro station right outside the stadium, plus a number of bus stops and a main line railway station nearby. The jointed initiative between the Club, Newcastle City Council and others is aimed at  getting fans to realise how simple it is to get to the match without a car.

To help the  City Council and its partners to achieve this goal, Steer Davies Gleave developed an online facility that would enable fans to plan public transport and walking journeys from their front door to their seat. The key features of this planner are the ability to choose which game you are attending and at which part of the ground you are sitting and a journey plan is then generated that gets you to the stadium 30 minutes before the game starts using electronic mapping. Fans can also choose to go via a point of interest such as a local pub or shopping centre.  For Blue Badge holders a facility is available for planning a driving route directly to disabled parking bays at the stadium.

Steer Davies Gleave worked closely with both the  City Council and the Football Club to ensure that suggested walking routes to the stadium were accessible and would not cause bottlenecks. Suggested walking routes feed directly from public transport hubs such as the Central rail station and key Metro stations. Fans can easily print off their results or even email them to their smart phones for viewing whilst on the way to the ground.

The planner is currently available via the brand new Altoonative Travel website and will soon be accessible on the new Newcastle United Football club website. The technology used builds on other integrated journey planner websites such as Connect Tees Valley, Tactran Connect and Brighton’s Journey On.