case study

Taylor Swift and her impact on surrounding roads in Sydney

On the 23rd-26th of February, Sydney was lucky enough to have Taylor Swift visit! We take a look at how traffic was impacted and how congestion affects drivers.

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Between the 23rd and 26th of February, Sydney was blessed by the presence of Taylor Swift herself! With an estimated 320 000 visitors over those four days, let’s see how the road networks managed and how drivers behaved. Along with the influx of visitors, Olympic Park also saw a partial closure to the Olympic Boulevard as indicated by the image below.

Road Closure at Olympic Boulevard as depicted by the lack of data points in that area.

On the Road Intelligence Platform, we compared the weekend of the concert (23-26 Feb) and the weekend before (16th-19th Feb) and found that average speeds across the length of Bennelong Parkway was slower than normal. The graph below shows travel speeds along the road.

Bennelong Parkway with comparably slower speeds during the weekend of the concert.

The graphs also showed that median speeds over distance on Australia Avenue on the weekend of the concert was slower.

Australia Avenue before and during the concert. Speeds were noticeably slower during the days of the concert.

Braking behaviour was shown to be heavier as well but no braking events exceeded the threshold of -0.47 (anything below is usually considered safe driving behaviour).

Braking events during and before the Taylor Swift concert. An increase of braking is evident along Bennelong Parkway.

Braking events on the days of the event.

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