Archived: Journey Planner – Getting to Sports Grounds

With six Premier League football grounds and seven Football League sides in London, not to mention the likes of the Olympic Stadium, Wembley, Twickenham and Lord’s, it’s little surprise that one of the first innovations on Journey Planner was to add the different entrances to sports venues as points of interest.

This originated with the opening of Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium in 2006, but has evolved to include all other sports grounds in the London area, and was a vital contribution to the effective Travel Demand Management (TDM) approach used during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Emirates Stadium
Adding different entrances to sports grounds into Journey Planner started with The Emirates Stadium in 2006.

Adding specific entrances to Journey Planner delivers great benefits in providing details of journeys to the particular part of the ground people need to get to, offering a more customised and tailored service, which is one of the main aims of Journey Planner.

What’s more, all of the separate entrances are fully integrated into the Journey Planner API and the “locate me” function on the TfL website. As well as making Journey Planner more relevant to everyone who uses it, this approach helps our operational staff on match days as customers are routed to different transport hubs, depending on the part of the ground they need to get to.

This has been particularly valuable at Wembley Stadium. Previously the stadium was a single location and everyone was routed via Wembley Park station, but now a mix of travel options via three nearby stations are now offered. This helps to distribute crowds more evenly, and contributes to making the journey to the ground more comfortable and convenient for everyone.

Our sports ground programme continues to expand as new venues are added, such as Saracens Rugby Club’s Allianz Park in Mill Hill, and the programme is complemented by the addition of special match day bus timetables where appropriate.

We look forward to the further development of our approach to sports grounds, helping more people get to sports venues as easily as possible as grounds in the capital continue to evolve.

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