is stadium expansion under jeopardy

[Simster]

No, no it doesn't. How can you delay a row of traffic that isn't moving anyway. I suggest you stand and watch these car "stopping" and letting people out and then state how it delays traffic. How do you further delay traffic that is at a standstill, 5 days a week at rush hour?? We are talking about the A27 slip road here. Take a look at it tonight, tomorrow, Thursday etc and you will see a row of traffic going back to the coldean slip road. Its a shit road layout, it has been for years, well before the stadium was built.

We are never going to see eye to eye on this. But in my experience, the delays on that slip road are compounded by too many people dropping off. It means that car isn't ready to move on when it should. If 4 or 5 cars are doing this, staggered down the slip road, it is easy to see that natural delays are worsened.

 

[Silent Bob]

Yes, because many Albion fans would be against expansion and would be prepared to lobby their local councillors if it was in the pipeline.

The transport system and catering staff are barely coping with the current number of people they have to deal with. Expansion now, without getting the house in order first, would make things far worse. it may add an extra 10 minutes to your 20 minute wait for a pie and drink, or an extra half-hour to your waiting time at the train station.

Right now, if expansion was on the agenda. it would be very easy to mobilise support behind a campaign saying we need a better Amex stadium, not a bigger Amex stadium.

Many Albion fans?
I think you've outed yourself as the only Albion fan who would lobby against the club...

The travel is a concern. But I very much doubt that building a new part of a stand with a new concourse is going to affect the catering elsewhere. I doubt the club would simply spread out the current level of staff and food/drink across anopther stand, they'd just hire more. There would still be queues but I haven't been anywhere with a crowd and catering/toilets where there hasn't been one. There were queues at Withdean ffs. Some people seem to think thatthey should be able to the same thing hundreds and thousands of people are trying to do in the same 15 minute window with no delay, it's totally unrealistic so I suppose it's not that surprising people who think this are willing to campaign against the club on that basis.

 

[Gwylan]

Until they sort the carnage that is midweek P&R (Saturday games seem to work better because of the availability of more bendy buses) expansion should be the last thing on the clubs mind

I don't see why any Albion supporter would not wish the club to be ambitious and look to expand. It's a simple equation: more seats = more money. 8,000 more seats would bring in nearly £5m extra per season, money to be invested in the team.

What you mean by "carnage" is people can't get back home before 10.00. But the majority of people could be home within an hour which is scarcely bad for a major event.

 

[Lush]

No, no it doesn't. How can you delay a row of traffic that isn't moving anyway. I suggest you stand and watch these car "stopping" and letting people out and then state how it delays traffic. How do you further delay traffic that is at a standstill, 5 days a week at rush hour?? We are talking about the A27 slip road here. Take a look at it tonight, tomorrow, Thursday etc and you will see a row of traffic going back to the coldean slip road. Its a shit road layout, it has been for years, well before the stadium was built.

It delays traffic because those cars wouldn't even be there if they weren't dropping passengers off.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I don't see why any Albion supporter would not wish the club to be ambitious and look to expand. It's a simple equation: more seats = more money. 8,000 more seats would bring in nearly £5m extra per season, money to be invested in the team.

I'm sure we'd all like to see the income from extra seats invested in the team. But a badly timed or badly prepared planning application to expand the stadium could, potentially, result in the Club being required to invest a huge proportion of that extra income in non-football related stuff, like improving the transport system or purchasing land for extra car-parking. That's the way planning conditions work.

If the effect is that the team building can't be funded and we don't end up as a Premier League team, we might just find that all these expensive extra seats generate no additional net revenue whatsoever.

In my opinion, there are risks as well as opportunities that need to be weighed up carefully, before any planning application is submitted.

 

[Tim Over Whelmed]

Surely if they carried on down that road that forks off to the left there are great big lay-bys and pull in areas which would mean no more than a 10-15 minute walk?

 

[Rookie]

I don't see why any Albion supporter would not wish the club to be ambitious and look to expand. It's a simple equation: more seats = more money. 8,000 more seats would bring in nearly £5m extra per season, money to be invested in the team.

What you mean by "carnage" is people can't get back home before 10.00. But the majority of people could be home within an hour which is scarcely bad for a major event.

Obviously I want the club to be ambitious and get more money but at the moment the infrastructure is not there (I speak from a user of the P&R so can have no say on the other option and as I said weekends are far better than mid week games) and until that can be improved I don't see how they can hope of putting 8,000 more people into the current situation at the end of games. I did think it was getting better but after Friday night it was clear that a hell of a lot of work needs to be done. In all honesty I have no doubt that the situation will improve as we are still in the bedding in process but it must be more important to sort the current situation rather than expanded it.

 

[CheeseRolls]

In terms of planning and timing the club are already committed to an application for the training ground in Adur. In theory this is relatively straightforward, but it still generates a significant workload. I can't see them pushing a stadium extension, until this is out of the way. Put it all together and the club have time enough to sort out the current teething issues and put together a detailed transport plan for the additional seats with a target date of the start of the season 2013-2014.

 

[Gwylan]

I'm sure we'd all like to see the income from extra seats invested in the team. But a badly timed or badly prepared planning application to expand the stadium could, potentially, result in the Club being required to invest a huge proportion of that extra income in non-football related stuff, like improving the transport system or purchasing land for extra car-parking.

Obviously I want the club to be ambitious and get more money but at the moment the infrastructure is not there

As I've posted before, there's a way to handle thousands of extra spectators without spending much money on infrastructure simply by increasing car usage from 2.5 people per car.

But even without this, it's clear from the comments on this thread that many of the problems are not cause by deficiencies in the infrastructure but often by careless and selfish driving. Having more parking spaces won't eliminate this.

I maintain however that part of the problem is that people have unreasonable expectations of how quickly 20,000 people can get away from a combined area - it's not going to take 10 or 15 minutes even if there were two extra car parks at Falmer.

 

[trueblue]

When people talk about the planning permission, surely that is mainly based around safety issues - not whether people who are going to the game may face the inconvenience, God forbid, of waiting half an hour for a train. For all the scaremongering on here, I think the majority (the vast majority) are getting the hang of the travel arrangements and finding something that suits them.

 

[Garage_Doors]

When people talk about the planning permission, surely that is mainly based around safety issues - not whether people who are going to the game may face the inconvenience, God forbid, of waiting half an hour for a train. For all the scaremongering on here, I think the majority (the vast majority) are getting the hang of the travel arrangements and finding something that suits them.

The TMP (travel management plan) is a compulsory part of the planning application.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

The TMP (travel management plan) is a compulsory part of the planning application.

That's that f***ed then.

 

[seafordsam]

The catering arrangements in the stadium aren't going to affect the planning permission, but the traffic management and transport infrastructure can and will. The Club do need to get this right by working with Southern Rail, the police and the P&R people. Having said that, the main problem on the trains appears to be the evening matches, which we are getting increasing numbers. It all seems to work really well on Saturdays.
Perhaps if Southern let more people onto the platform at a time, the trains would be fully used and not leave the station with plenty of standing room on them.

 

[trueblue]

The TMP (travel management plan) is a compulsory part of the planning application.

Yes, but what counts as unacceptable? Most of the complaints are purely about the inconvenience of having to wait for trains/buses. If it's causing widespread disruption away from the ground then fair enough - I can see then that the council has to take that into consideration as it's for the greater good. However, the majority of those attending the games have a choice - they can adjust their travel plans and/or their expectations of how long it will take to get to and from games. Or they can decide not to go at all, if they really feel having to walk for twenty minutes or wait 30-45 minutes for a train is simply too much to bear.

 

[Goldstone Rapper]

The catering arrangements in the stadium aren't going to affect the planning permission, but the traffic management and transport infrastructure can and will. The Club do need to get this right by working with Southern Rail, the police and the P&R people. Having said that, the main problem on the trains appears to be the evening matches, which we are getting increasing numbers. It all seems to work really well on Saturdays.
Perhaps if Southern let more people onto the platform at a time, the trains would be fully used and not leave the station with plenty of standing room on them.

Yes, the catering arrangements have zero part to play in the planning application. However, the long, slow queues for beer and food, added to the long, slow queues for transport, do affect the overall Amex experience. How they relate is that some people may use their annoyance at one to make complaints about the other. Happily, it's a mere ripple at the moment because the team is doing well, playing attractive football and people are loving being in the new stadium.