One of my favorites, just remembered it, and this article is from the AU’s perspective.
I like that they have to explain it to Aussies because they don’t understand why there would be a need for massive parking lots.
Not all US cities have reliable or widespread public transport networks, so it’s likely that a similar number of Americans drive to and from concerts. As such, most stadiums in the US are surrounded by vast parking lots to accommodate all the vehicles - but not in Australia.
Aussie here, We’re still very much a car centric country, but for major public events we are pretty much hardwired to use public transport. I dont know what the actual parking capacity of the MCG is, but Marvel Stadium (Docklands) is only 500 cars with 55000 seats(not including the many nearby free and paid parking locations), that is much smaller than the MCG at over 100000 capacity, one of the worlds highest capacity stadiums despite our puny population.
Apart from most stadiums having extensive train, bus and drop-off access, we also have Park and Ride programs that can temporarily scale up to cover events like this which can basically turn any unused land into a large temporary carpark with dedicated bus services that take you either to the venue directly or to the local train station when they both have limited parking.
I can’t imagine taking a car to an event like this, imagine taking 1 hour just to get out of the parking lot, needing to have a designated driver etc.
Brit here. I think we’re the same? I’ve never gone to a concert by car. It’s usually in a major city and it’s just easier by train. Not cheaper, though.
I’ve had friends tell me they’ve been stuck in car parks for hours while leaving concerts, so people obviously do it. It’s just not a great idea.
I guess it’d be different if we had massive car parks instead of train stations, which is becoming more the case with shopping.
And then there’s the sad story of Melbourne’s Waverley Park, a large stadium which they built in an area with no decent public transport. What happens when you build Melbourne’s largest stadium with >100,000 capacity, and also a large but inadequate 25,000 car spots and no usable public transport?
It was never filled since they simply couldn’t get enough people to it. Also even then it apparently took hours just to get out of the parking lot after a game. It ended up failing as a stadium and being converted into housing years later.