Parking rethink after Driffield Show gridlock
Traffic management is under review at Driffield Show after a record attendance gridlocked the market town.
Police had to turn visitors away when a massive 30,500 crowd quickly packed car parks leading to huge traffic tailbacks on Wednesday.
Show parks have a capacity for about 9,000 vehicles, but some visitors were left disappointed after queuing in the jams for more than two hours.
Humberside Police traffic officers and officials from Driffield Agricultural Society, who organise the show, are to thrash out a new traffic management strategy.
One solution could be to set up "satellite" car parks further away from the showground in a bid to reduce the number of vehicles on roads around the town.
Inspector Mark Hughes, East Riding roads policing officer, said: "The large number of vehicles was totally unexpected and that led to traffic management problems.
"There were big tailbacks of traffic on all roads leading to the showground and that caused Driffield becoming gridlocked.
"Although the society thought it had provided enough car parking, the system could not cope when the parks were quickly at capacity.
"The police took the decision to turn some visitors back as a short-term measure to sort out the situation."
Insp Hughes said they would be meeting the society to discuss the traffic management strategy to prevent a repeat of the problems in 2010.
Wednesday's massive attendance easily smashed the previous record of 25,517,which was set last year.
David Tite, show director, said: "We knew we had a lot of people on the showground, but it was almost unbelievable when we totted up the gate receipts.
"The huge attendance was a fantastic achievement, but we are sorry that some people were unable to attend because of the traffic issues.
"We thought we had everything covered but there was an unprecedented demand from people who wanted to attend the show.
"I would like to apologise to those who were turned back and did not get into the show and assure them that steps are being taken to prevent it happening again."
Next year's show date will be decided at a committee meeting in August.
Comments
by Nick, Willerby
Friday, July 24 2009, 7:28AM
“Great day at Driff show but-- oh dear yet again APPALLING trafic management for a large UK event. Schools out on hols earlier than normal, more stay at home tourism decent forecast and STILL no one predicted bumber crowds. The car park we eventually got to was no where near at capacity when they closed it. There was appalling parking with cars taking up space for two, and great stretches of field along the back fence unused. The stewards (the few that were there ) were next to useless. When are we going ot get decent stewardship for big events instead of always done on the cheap with too few and poor quality traffice management.. Otherwise a great day out - highly recommended”