Opening chaos expected on Friday

Copenhagen’s new multi venue arena, Royal Arena, was recently officially opened by HRH Crown Prince Frederik. Even before its first concert on 3 February, it is expected to create traffic chaos in the area around – extending all the way to the Copenhagen Airport, Fields, Ørestad and the Øresund’s highway.

By Bente D. Knudsen      Pictures: Hasse Ferrold from the official opening by Crown Prince Frederik in January 2017

If you are travelling tomorrow 3 February in the area around the new Royal Arena and the roads in Ørestad – expect traffic chaos when 16,000 concert guests make their way to attend the first of four concerts in February by the band Metallica.

The Copenhagen municipality has issued a warning to all travellers – residents and people who work in Ørestad, on Vestamager as well as drivers who use the Øresund’s motorway to go to and from the airport and Sweden.

The new arena is expected to affect the traffic massively whenever there are events and concerts at the Royal Arena – on average an event is expected to take place every fourth day with an added up to 3,000 cars in the area.

The Metallica concerts are sold out (concerts on 3, 4, 7 and 9 February starting at 20:00) with approximately 5,000 tickets sold to guests from the greater Copenhagen area and the rest from much further away according to Live Nation, the concert organiser.

In general, the events at the Royal Arena are expected to draw guests from Germany and Sweden as well.

Criticism of the lack of parking space has been voiced by anxious residents in the area, who are worried that they will not find a place in their prepaid parking on the days when events take place at Royal Arena.

The city of Copenhagen will be surveying the traffic situation via the traffic tower – Trafiktårnet – and will issue as much information as possible, and will follow the situation to be able to adjust and direct traffic as best as possible.

They are encouraging concert guest to use the public transport options (the Metro is putting in extra trains on the Ørestad line) or take their bikes to the concert hall.

Traffic queues and congestions are expected on the drive on and off ramps of the highway, which will affect the roads leading to the highway, as well as on Øresund’s Boulevard, Center Boulevard and Hannemanns Alle.

You can stay updated on the traffic situation via the app Trafikken Hovedstaden as well as their twitter profile.

The traffic information will be coming from the traffic tower, where the municipal traffic officers are coordinating with Vejdirektoratet and also with DR P4’s traffic announcements.

After the first concert with the maximum amount of guests ( Royal Arena can adjust their size to host different events –  16,000 is the maximum amount of guests), all involved parties are expected to evaluate and make adjustments to be able to control the traffic situation better for the next large events.

” Information about how the traffic and guests in the area behave is our most important tool to optimise the traffic flow, and we are very much aware that there will be a new traffic situation in the area once Royal Arena starts its events. We do not yet know or understand the exact consequences, which is why collecting data and analysing the situation in the first period will be of the utmost importance”, says centerchef Steffen Rasmussen from Copenhagen City’s Teknik- and Miljøforvaltning.

The rest of 2017 concerts are planned with amongst other Drake, Bruno Mars, and Aerosmith, and sport events such as the World Championship’s in Ice hockey in 2018.