Sorting the parking chaos at Fieldays
Volunteer Simon Kay is the goto parking guy at Fieldays. The events committee member has the logistical nightmare of organising the parking for the four-day national agriculture event at Mystery Creek this week, from June 14 to 17.
He relies on more volunteers to do the ‘‘conducting’’, which means organising about 60 people. But in full swing, they’re parking a car a second.
‘‘The volunteers come from everywhere - they come from Northland, there is one coming from Queenstown. They are mostly from the Waikato, but they do come from everywhere.’’
A number of them are experienced ‘‘parkers’’, which allows Kay - in his eighth year at Fieldays - to run a well-oiled machine.
‘‘When the parkers are all going flat out, they can park a car a second. Even though it seems like you are waiting, they do get them off the road pretty quickly.’’
He doubts there are more efficiencies to be made.
‘‘It’s getting bigger and bigger, but it’s only getting incrementally bigger, so it’s not too bad. Most of it is just the pedestrian and car traffic, but we’ve got that down to a pretty fine art now.’’
Kay’s preparation began about two months ago with the odd day here and there, but in the past two weeks has become a full-time job.
‘‘I imagine we park about 20,000 cars a day - that would be on a peak day. Friday is our busiest day and there would be nearly 40,000 people Fieldays.
‘‘They’ve got these buses coming now that are park-andride. And if you have a Fieldays ticket, you can get a free bus from Cambridge, Te Awamutu and Hamilton.’’
And Kay says there’s extra at the incentive to take the bus - you won’t need to remember where the car’s parked.
‘‘I was talking to the police the other day and they get about eight reports every year of cars getting stolen and it ends up that the person just couldn’t remember where to find their car.’’
It’s no surprise cars are lost with parking covering about 60 hectares; however, Kay says the Fieldays app can help with that.
‘‘I certainly tell everybody to download that - it’s free. When you park your car, you can pin your car so it takes you right back to your car when you finish. It’s got the maps of the sites and where and who all the exhibitors are.’’
He’s not quite sure what keeps him coming back year after year.
‘‘It’s just the challenge of making it work, getting all these people into the car parks and through the gates.’’