IN-PERSON Barcelona Livable Cities. Section A

Abstract

Millions of football fans throughout England attend football matches religiously every Saturday for a 3pm kick off. There is at least one football ground in every city across the UK and almost every town within England has its own team. However, majority of football grounds are not located directly in the city centre but rather on its outskirts, meaning fans will have to cross busy roads before they are able to reach the ground. This puts fans in harm’s way of oncoming vehicles and becomes unsafe. Although football clubs have some temporary measures in place; such as closure of immediate roads surrounding the ground, no measures have been made at the busy junction located on the fans route to the ground which they must negotiate. Therefore, this study aims to look in to improving pedestrian movements for a chosen football ground, Birmingham City FC, in hope that the research can be taken forward and implemented throughout the UK. In order to achieve this aim, a microsimulation model of Bordesley Circus has been built using VISSIM 11 (primary data). Traffic flows and signal specifications (secondary data) were obtained from Birmingham City Council (BCC). The model has been converged, calibrated and validated and two options have been developed in VISSIM with the goal to improve pedestrian and vehicle journey times across the junction, whilst focusing on pedestrian safety. The analysis of the results has shown that by removing pedestrians from the vehicle path by the implementation of a footbridge over Watery Lane Middleway, you can improve pedestrian and vehicle journey times simultaneously. In addition, a footbridge ensures the safety of fans by taking out the conflict with oncoming vehicles. Recommendations have been made on how to further improve the results which wasn’t achieved during the time frame of this research project.