The Stockmans Lane Roundabout is NOT a safe evacuation route

Casement Park is tightly bounded on three sides by residential accommodation, with only limited exiting otherwise than at the Andersonstown Road frontage. However, it is accepted by all parties that an emergency evacuation scenario in which the Andersonstown Road exits are all closed is reasonably foreseeable. That scenario poses tremendous difficulties for the proposed new stadium in meeting the requirements for safe evacuation of spectators, particularly from a full capacity event with over 34,500 attendees.

The emergency evacuation solution proposed by the GAA in that scenario is based on routing spectators from the stadium to the Stockmans Lane Roundabout, underneath the M1 motorway. That proposed solution

The Stockmans Lane Roundabout is NOT a safe evacuation route

The Stockmans Lane Roundabout Scenario

In a scenario where the stadium needs to be evacuated and the Andersonstown Road exits are not available, the contingency plan for a full capacity crowd (34,578) would route spectators from the stadium to some unspecified place of safety via the Stockmans Lane Roundabout. The route from the Owenvarragh Park exit to the Stockmans Lane Roundabout is illustrated below:

Owenvarragh Park to Stockmans Lane Roundabout – 620 metres

The final portion of the evacuation route – 45 metres long – narrows to a footpath
only. Widening of that footpath is constrained by the presence of an electricity pylon.

Footpath leading to Stockmans Lane Roundabout pedestrian exit, from Stockmans Lane

The evacuation route leads to a single pedestrian exit from Stockmans Lane that is just 1.9 metres in width and protected from the motorway roundabout by a steel barrier measuring close to 30 metres.

Pedestrian exit to Stockmans Lane Roundabout, from Stockmans Lane: Width = 1.9 metres

Unacceptable Risks to Public Safety

The proposed use of the Stockmans Lane Roundabout poses unacceptable risks to public safety.

First, each of the evacuation routes to the Stockmans Lane Roundabout would entail a narrowing of escape routes. That is contrary to the principle of simultaneous evacuation  and the concept of continuous exiting. The crowd pressure risks to public safety would be most acute at the exit from Stockmans Lane to the Roundabout. There, the escape route narrows to a width of 1.9 metres. Consequently, there would be severe crowd build-up at the Stockmans Lane Roundabout exit. The evacuating crowd would effectively have to be ‘held’ within the surrounding streets (the Mooreland and Owenvarragh ‘horseshoe’ and the Stockmans Lane area) over that period of time, leading to a risk of crushing. That is entirely contrary to the concept of a free-flowing exiting system.

Second, the Stockmans Lane Roundabout scenario provides ample evidence that there is no design solution to safely accommodate large crowds at a redeveloped Casement Park, whether for sports or concert events. Rather, it is proposed to manage safety issues on a contingency basis, with heavy reliance on crowd control measures (thus far, undisclosed). That presents its own problems of coordination and, ultimately, capacity to respond to unanticipated circumstances.

Those risks were not addressed by the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) in the assessment of the Casement Park planning application. Effectively, the planning authorities deferred substantive consideration of safety issues to the Safety of Sports Grounds regulations. However, as the proposed evacuation route is external to the proposed stadium, the risks would not be effectively regulated under the Safety of Sports Grounds Order, which pertains solely to the curtilage of the relevant sports stadium.

The potential risks to public safety from the proposed use of the Stockmans Lane Roundabout are well illustrated by the tragic Love Parade disaster which occurred on 24 July 2010, in Duisberg, Germany, when 21 people lost their lives. The Love Parade disaster was not the result of any one factor. Rather, it was the result of a combination of factors (see Box A in the accompanying document). The combination of factors that precipitated the Love Parade disaster are now ominously apparent in the disjointed approach to emergency evacuation from the proposed Casement Park redevelopment.

More Questions than Answers

As the possibility of an emergency evacuation in a scenario where the Andersonstown Road exits are not available is reasonably foreseeable, the contingency plans for dealing with that possibility would need to be in place on each and every occasion of a major (or medium) event at a redeveloped Casement Park. That would entail significant deployment of resources by the police, fire and ambulance services. The direct monetary costs of those resources have not, to date, been taken into account in assessing the costs of operating the proposed new stadium. Nor have the opportunity costs. If the police are busy implementing the proposed evacuation contingency plan, they are not available for other policing duties, such as preventing crime. Similarly, ambulances on standby at Casement Park are not available to respond to emergency calls at other locations.

The proposed solution also raises a host of questions around traffic management and pedestrian safety during any major or medium-sized event at the proposed new stadium. For example:

• Would the Stockmans Road Roundabout require to be closed off completely to non-spectators while an event is in progress, to be prepared for the ‘reasonably foreseeable’ evacuation? If so, how would displacement of non-spectator traffic be managed?
• Would traffic management arrangements need to be implemented on the stretch of the M1 which passes over the Stockmans Lane Roundabout? Again, how would displacement of non-spectator traffic be managed?
• Would the streets surrounding the stadium be subject to a lockdown, to keep the roads clear in the event of an emergency evacuation to the Stockmans Lane Roundabout? Would residents be asked to park elsewhere during events?
• Even when the crowd has reached the Stockmans Lane Roundabout, where would they go? The Boucher Playing Fields? Somewhere else? In any event, the crowd would still be on the public highway for some time after exiting Stockmans Lane.
• What infrastructure works would be required to modify the Roundabout for use as an emergency evacuation route? Undoubtedly, the Roundabout has not been designed for such a purpose.

All of the above considerations point to a much lower capacity for any redevelopment
of the Casement Park stadium. Certainly, no more than 15,000.