The use of cellular TMSI/Bluetooth technology for tracking pedestrian movement at a mass event: a pilot-study undertaken at the Cape Town Stadium

Abstract

Paper presented at the 31st Annual Southern African Transport Conference 9-12 July 2012 "Getting Southern Africa to Work", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

In this paper, proximity-based Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity (TMSI) tagging and Bluetooth tracking is postulated as an efficient and effective methodology for analyzing the routing dynamics of spectator movements around the Cape Town stadium both before and after a mass participation event. A case pilot-study of the “Coldplay” music concert event undertaken by Path Intelligence Ltd (a UK-based company) on 5 October 2011 (with 60,000 spectators attending the concert) is described in detail. The results of this study will give an indication of the added value of the methodology for the various stakeholders hosting and managing the event and provides valuable input towards the feasibility study for provision of a proposed new pedestrian bridge across the Western Boulevard at Portswood Road. By covering seven locations within the stadium study area with receiver units with a further two units located at the BRT and rail station in the Cape Town CBD, the study was able to extract individual pathway trajectories generated by detected spectators. Apart from generating clear statistics such as pedestrian routing, the analysis revealed other valuable outputs such as pedestrian counts, travel times, fan-walk versus BRT modal split etc. The paper concludes that TMSI/Bluetooth tracking offers significant advantages for tracking pedestrians at mass participation events and outlines some shortcomings and remaining deficiencies identified during the pilot-project experience.