Protecting pedestrians

STEPPING UP SAFETY

THE FRANKSTON CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS WAS ONE OF THE FIRST EVENTS TO USE A PORTABLE BOLLARD SYSTEM, DESIGNED BY SAFEROADS, TO PROTECT PEDESTRIANS FROM ERRANT VEHICLES.

Frankston’s Christmas Festival of Lights is a night to remember for families far and wide. Each year thousands of people descend on Frankston town centre to watch a Christmas concert, eat street food and even catch a glimpse of Santa.

With countless rides and food stalls, the festival is one of Frankston’s largest events.

When organising an event of this scale, festival goers’ safety around traffic was a paramount concern for the organisers.

Frankston City Council was tasked with finding a solution to protect pedestrians and enable them to easily enter and exit the area while enjoying the festival.

The council contracted Saferoads’ rental division, Road Safety Rental, to design a solution that ticked all of the safety boxes.

General Manager of Road Safety Rental Trent Loveless says the company used the concept of its in-ground bollard systems (OmniStop Ultra and OmniStop Super Duty) to create the right application for events.

OmniStop Bollards have been used in many situations before, such as bus stops and airport terminals, and the team decided to adapt the bollard to create the OmniStop Portable, which was used for the festival.

“The OmniStop Portable is a fully modular and freestanding bollard system that stops vehicle intrusion of crowded zones while allowing pedestrians to flow through the area,” Mr. Loveless says.

When creating the portable bollard system, the team faced a challenge to ensure the portable bollards could resist the weight of an oncoming vehicle.

“The team went through various degrees of engineering estimation and calculation to ensure that some of our conceptualised ideas passed a level of crash testing and finite element analysis,” Mr. Loveless says.

The final OmniStop Portable product is specified to the AS/NZS 3845.2:2017

The OmniStop Portable allows people to move around an area quickly without it being a huge barricade or roadblock.

standard, at 57 kilometres per hour.

In accordance with MASH Clause 5.2, the bollard yielded predictably with no fragmentation, and the vehicle was contained with 3.52 metres of deflection. The system was tested with a 2.27-tonne pick-upstyle truck.

Mr. Loveless says the council were looking for a bollard system that protected against wayward vehicles and allowed pedestrians to enter and exit the area within the barrier easily and quickly in case of an emergency.

“The OmniStop Portable allows people to move around an area quickly without it becoming a huge barricade or roadblock. If patrons are restricted from exiting an area quickly, this can be dangerous too,” he says.

Service vehicles were also required to have access into the festival area in the case of a medical event or other emergency.

“We developed a gate system that allowed us to open a 4.5-metre gate to allow emergency services through the protected area. The traffic controllers simply had to pull a pin, unlock the padlock and open the gate,” Mr. Loveless says.

The Road Safety Rental team used a forklift to install the portable bollards at the festival location. This was needed as the bollards weigh up to 1250 kilograms each.

“We had to set up in the early hours of the morning until 10am and then the pack-up started about 11.30pm when the event was officially closed,” he says.

For installation, the OmniStop Portable can be transported using a forklift, depending on what is best suited to the site.

“On the night, we used a forklift because we had a lot of terrain to cover. We had to go up and down gutters, in driveways or over nature strips, so that made it relatively easy.”

Each section of the bollard system was connected by Saferoads’ locking system with a locking plate and a turn-key solution to ensure it was easy to set up and reliable in the event of an impact.

“The mechanism we created allows the plates underneath the bollards to stay completely fixed together and move less upon impact. It also helps to contain a vehicle in a scenario where there is a hostile attack or an accident,” Mr. Loveless says.

The OmniStop Portable was developed with these specific kinds of events in mind, and while it can be used in other situations such as inner-city worksites, Mr. Loveless believes it is best suited to event security.

“They really are an important pedestrian protection device, especially for mass crowds. Places like AFL games, parades or the Australian Open; that is where the OmniStop Portable is going to be most effective.”