IT’S GOING TO BE BIG!
Posted in March logistics on February 1, 2011
We’ve been doing some phoning and emailing round and so far we have been told of about 500 coaches due to come to the march.
Even allowing for the fact that some of these are different people telling us about the same coach, that is still a huge number. And there are probably local coaches that neither we nor our union contacts know about.
If put in a line, that’s about seven miles of coaches.
That is absolutely huge – and shows what an amazing day it is going to be. But the sheer size of the event presents some real challenges.
COACHES
There is no way that we can fit 500 coaches into central London. Even if they got in, they might not get out again as the resulting grid-lock and the shortage of pick-up spaces near to Hyde Park means that it would be very hard to organise the orderly collection of marchers after the event. We are therefore locating coach parks near to public transport outside central London, and will be directing coaches to these. We know that’s disappointing, but it’s the price of organising such a big event, and probably means that people will get home more quickly.
This does mean that you need to tell us about all coaches that are coming. We are already in touch with unions and TUC regions, but please make sure that you register a transport steward. If you are a local group who are not in contact with us though your union or TUC region, please register as a transport steward, but also use the contact form to tell us about your coach.
You should also check out the False Economy coach map, which will let you advertise spare places on your coach.
WHAT TIME TO ARRIVE?
The early publicity for the march said assemble at 11am to move off at noon. The numbers we are expecting mean that while it may start to move off by noon, it will still be leaving the assembly area at 2pm and probably later. If you are coming by public tranpsort on your own or as part of a small group, then you might want to avoid hanging around at the assembly point by arriving later rather than earlier. It will also be easier for late arrivals to enter the march from the rear which will mean aiming for where Blackfriars Bridge meets the Embankment.
Here you go Ross: http://marchforthealternative.org.uk/march-logistics/locations/
please can someone tell where we are meeting?
When 2 million marched against the war, coaches were parked all around Hyde Park and we still got off on time. I don’t understand why there is a problem this time.
I realise this is probably not something you want to deal with, but would it not be possible to use the February 15th 2003 feeder system: the march proper began on Embankment, but Northern/Midlands people de-coached on Euston Road for a march down Gower Street towards Aldwych, and South/West people marched from Victoria to meet at Parliament. That way, you have two totally separate coach drops, and also better transport links than relying on Temple Tube.