Organisers underestimated turnout by as much as 150,000
An independent report into why Auckland’s infrastructure buckled on the opening night of the Rugby World Cup has been released.
Two-thousand people missed the opening ceremony at Eden Park after trains broke down and Downtown Auckland descended into chaos after four times the number of people expected showed up to celebrate.
The report identifies a number of factors that led to the night's problems, but explicitly says the single greatest contribution was that organisers underestimated how many people would come to party central and how many would use public transport.
Organisers planned for between 30-50,000 people in downtown Auckland. Instead there were 200,000 and crowd control simply wasn't adequate.
Because Of the number of people using public transport, overloading began as early as 12.30pm - causing delays for the rest of the day.
The report also found poor communication with train passengers about delays contributed to the way people behaved; in some cases pushing emergency buses and getting out of trains onto the tracks.
Auckland Transport simply underestimated how many people would want to catch the bus, trains and ferries.
Meanwhile Auckland Mayor Len Brown has announced that those who missed out on the World Cup opening ceremony and first match will be offered a free ticket to the semi-finals – but it seems they are unlikely to see the All Blacks.
People who missed all or part of the opening night and the All Blacks game against Tonga, and whose claims have been verified, will be offered tickets to semi-final 1 on Saturday, October 15. The All Blacks have to lose to Canada to play in this draw.
Regardless, Mayor Len Brown says the compensation is “fair”.
“We have arrived at a package that we think is fair to those who were caught up in the unprecedented opening night delays,” says Len Brown. “We know we can’t make up for the experience that was missed, but hope this gesture of goodwill is received in the spirit in which it is made."
Those who only missed the opening ceremony will receive a ticket to the Bronze Final on Friday, October 21.
Auckland Council is continuing to work with Rugby New Zealand 2011 Ltd to verify ticketing information and process requests for redress.
The registrations received relate to 922 tickets.
A letter will be going out to all verified registrants in the next few days. This will ask for acceptance of the council’s terms of offer. Once that is received, tickets will be released next week.
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