Public Transport Victoria CEO Mark Wild has torn into Soundwave boss AJ Maddah for his lack of planning of the event and failure to give punters advance warning of the transport debacle.
In a statement Wild says that Maddah knew about the transport situation months ago but did notify fans buying Soundwave tickets in an appropriate timeframe. He also accused the promoter of putting on shuttle buses at an inflated price at the last minute. As a result, Public Transport Victoria will now supply free shuttle buses from Soundwave to nearby railway stations to ease congestion.
Here is the full statement from Mark Wild of Public Transport Victoria.
Public Transport Victoria (PTV) is stepping in to provide free shuttle buses for Soundwave attendees at this weekend’s two-day event.
Event organisers completely failed to give PTV enough notice about the event in order to provide additional services, on a weekend that is already packed with other major events including:
• Roxette in Concert
• Super Rugby Round 2 – Rebels vs Waratahs
• White Night Melbourne
• Guy Sebastian in Concert
• Black Caviar Lightning Day
• ICC Cricket World Cup – Match 13 – South Africa vs India
• Eagles in Concert
• FFA League Round 19 – Melbourne City vs Perth Glory
PTV is already providing additional public transport services for these events.
Soundwave was told months ago that due to the lack of notice about their event and other events that had already been planned, no trains would operate to the venue, but decided to continue selling tickets knowing that options for patrons would be limited.
Claims by the promoter that requests for public transport for the event were made in April last year are incorrect. Soundwave has not submitted an event notification to PTV nor applied for public transport.
Soundwave has known for a long time that they would need to organise shuttle bus services, yet they did not take the necessary steps to provide them or include the price of these buses in the admission price.
It is entirely inappropriate that Soundwave organisers did not let their patrons know of this arrangement well in advance, with organisers only deciding they would provide the shuttle services in the last week.
PTV believes the shuttle services should be free, and that is why we are taking this step to provide them at no cost for attendees.
Soundwave’s haphazard approach to planning for the event did not just impact on the provision of public transport services but almost resulted in the event being cancelled. In fact Soundwave began selling tickets for the event before they had even secured a venue.
People attending Soundwave are advised there is no longer a requirement to purchase shuttle bus tickets for Soundwave – these services will now be provided free of charge by Public Transport Victoria.
The free shuttle services will operate from North Melbourne and Footscray stations to at least 5 minute frequencies.
With so many events on, and large numbers of people expected to be using public transport, I urge all customers to plan ahead by topping up their myki in advance and plan their journey using the journey planner on PTV’s website.
