Europes largest permeable paving coach and car park. London's 2012 Olympic Games posed some unique challenges for organisers. In order to reduce congestion on the roads around the main venue thousands of spectators were brought in by coach. The Northern Spectator Transport Mall (NSTM) was created to allow hundreds of coaches to drop thousands of passengers off only yards away from the main venues for the duration of the games. The Challenge Creating the NSTM posed a set of unique challenges. To provide a sustainable coach park solution, close to the main games venue, that would only have a minimal impact on the local community or environment and could be returned to its original use as soon as possible afterwards. Hackney Marshes is the renowned home of Sunday League football with over 100 matches played on its 88 pitches every week. 25 acres (100,000m2), equivalent to around 14 football pitches of the site was handed over to the ODA in the summer of 2011, and a surface was required to be installed in just six weeks so that the coach park would be ready to service test events in early 2012. After the games, the site needed to be transformed back to football pitches as soon as possible, ready for the 2013 Football season. A number of different options were considered to create a ‘no-dig' solution to minimise material excavation and disposal, vehicle movements and costs. With the final pavement construction, a system was required that would offer a minimal environmental impact from the materials being used and a surface water disposal solution in order to ideally remove the need to connect to existing drainage systems or create a new drainage system. A surface was needed that would provide high durability in order to cope with the large number of heavy loads that would be passing over it for the duration of the games, but could also be removed quickly.

Project Results

The paving system achieved a water permeability rate of 18,750 litres per second per hectare.