Here's an interesting article on how badly the City was prepared for the Toronto Raptors parade in 2019. The turnout was triple what they planned for, and a hired expert said it was a "near miss" where so many things could have gone very wrong, even beyond the shooting, which really wasn't that big of a thing (most people there didn't even know it happened until after the event was over.) The City was still unprepared for what to do if the Blue Jays won the World Series. It would have been chaos.
But the key takeaways are:
- Have a stock plan and stick to it. MLSE and Rogers can be allowed to customise only small parts of it, but never the parade route
- Events in other locations won't deter many people from coming to the main event. A watch party in Mississauga will pull in less than 1% of the attendees.
- Nathan Phillips Square cannot hold these events anymore. There is not enough space and not enough entry and exit capacity (especially now with OL construction on Queen)
- Make the route as linear as possible from beginning to end, not a winding route through the core
- Do not have it pass anywhere near Union Station or any major transit hub
Not explicitly mentioned in the report, but made obvious in the reporting is these things will have to be shunted down to Lake Shore Boulevard and Exhibition Place.
After the Raptors parade in 2019, it left serious doubts about Toronto's ability to fete our sports heroes in world class style.
www.thestar.com
Thought I'd reply to this great post about the city's crowding challenge last night for New Year's Eve, since recent years saw bad bottlenecks at Union Station, and it appears to have gone smoothly.
There were a number of things in place to help, some beginning at 12AM;
- at a point around 1130pm Union Station switched into an exit mode so ingress and flow could be controlled in anticipation of crowds once fireworks ended
- on York St people wanting TTC were directed to St Andrew Station or go east on Front to Bay and use those entrances
- on Bay St people wanting TTC were directed to the Front/Bay to use that PATH/Brookfield entrance
- starting at 6pm Bay southbound and York northbound from Queens Quay to Front closed to cars, and close to midnight both directions on both roads closed until ~1:30, giving people plenty of room to overflow onto the roadway
- TTC ran express busses from 12AM-2AM taking people up Bathurst and Sherbourne to those subway stations to help divert people away from Union as well
- two teams of volunteers with the city were each on Bay and York to assist
- busier parks had plans to restrict ingress if crowding approached concerning levels
I wasn't at Union during the event but I never heard anything on my radio about there being an issue, and the people I saw afterwards didn't mention anything, like it being chaotic or going awry. Took a look on social media but haven't seen anything about problems like years past. The event was supported by approx 70 volunteers, plus at least 30 on production (both city staff and contracted for the event), and lots of security guards and police.
A bit after 11pm there were brief concerns at and near Harbourfront Centre (the area/park, not the building) that the space would get so full it would overflow onto Queens Quay W, so at least at Bay and QQ from 1130 onward someone was on a megaphone encouraging people to go east to Sugar Beach. A little hard to convince people when Harbour Square Park is right
there and it's 11:45pm, but some did. Around 11:25 an est. ~1000 people were going into Harbourfront Centre every 10 minutes. The atmosphere as people entered the park near me was relaxed and cheerful pre-and-post fireworks though the crowd was a little "excited" in the 10 minutes before midnight with people walking fast or even running to get into the park and see the show. The show was advertised as 10 minutes but was planned for and ran 15 min, which was kept as a secret/surprise.
Projected attendance was 250k but don't know what estimated/actual numbers were and how much the weather impacted that. Even still, for 20-25 minutes straight until midnight people in droves filled up the north corners of Bay/QQ, what felt like 300-500 people every 30 seconds. In the face of the the cold, people still will go out to do something fun! Very diverse crowd with lots of families, tons of young people, and faces of all ethnicities.
Egress was smooth near me and as the fireworks were close to ending the flow cranked up and a couple police officers were feebly trying to stop enormous crowds from crossing on red even though traffic was standstill on QQ and eventually just mostly let people walk through uninterrupted. Lots of cheers and excited yelling as people left but no belligerence. Egress was a constant flow for ~20 minutes after fireworks ended at 12:15, and was fairly quiet by 12:45.
Bit of a shame the success of last night won't get the same attention as when things go wrong. If you happened to see the countdown on the live stream and wondered why on earth it was Shelly Carroll on stage, it's because the Mayor was out of town and her flight in got delayed so a councillor was on standby as a contingency LOL
