Your Guide to Using Crowd Control Barriers Purposefully

Crowd safety management is one of the topmost priorities for businesses during high rush events such as sales festivals, concerts, or sports events. A well-placed crowd control barrier is a great tool to help in such situations. It serves multiple purposes for businesses dealing with large crowds on a daily basis.

Apart from helping businesses manage the behavior of crowds to prevent people from the risk of jumping lines and falling, they also help in managing line routes and preventing overcrowding or situations involving unnecessary build-up of audience pressure. Read on to know some of the best tips to set up your crowd control barriers to get the most out of them. 

Plan Ahead

Planning is an important aspect of setting up pedestrian barriers. For maximum benefit, you need to set them up in a way that best ensures the control of traffic and easy movement of the crowd. 

Therefore, it is best to put them in places where you don’t want people to pass frequently or stand around in. If there are any advisories that you want to put in, make sure to leave enough gaps between barriers to account for this.

Mark Clear Queue Zones

To manage your crowd smoothly at big sales events, concerts, or other gatherings, one of the most important things to do is mark clear zones for your queues. Among these include the queue entrance, check out point and final destination.

Another thing you need to ensure is to set up your crowd barriers well in advance of your event, several hours or a night before you expect visitors to arrive. Managing the crowd rush becomes nearly impossible if visitors start reaching and gathering around the venue early. 

Avoid Creating Straight Lines

Avoiding straight lines is another crucial aspect to take care of while setting up crowd control barriers. U-shaped lines are always better than straight ones, as the latter does not make the best use of space. 

Having U-shaped lines or giving your lines certain curves and bends help you keep people from rushing to the doors and causing a commotion. Also, make sure to use tough and sturdy metal for crowd control barriers, as they tend to offer a more easy and practical solution compared to basic rope barriers.

Leave Space for Exits and Gates

In crowded places, it is difficult to take apart a line of barriers once you’ve arranged them. Removing one barrier from a line is likely to disrupt the whole queue. Also, if you do not account for emergencies, even a slight shove can begin a domino effect leading to utter confusion and people toppling over each other within no time.

It is essential to plan in advance and decide on where to have breaks in lines or insert gates in the queue. This will also allow you to manage emergencies more effectively, as the crowd will be able to leave quickly, and your staff or security professionals will also have easy access to any point of the queue. 

Install Them Upright

Putting up your pedestrian barriers for once will not serve your purpose well. Remember that at large gatherings, there are plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. For instance, if a barrier is broken or knocked over, people may attempt to jump it, and the likelihood of chaos will become very high.

This requires you to ensure the barriers are planted straight, remain presentable and are not moved from their places at all. This will also help you achieve a more professional and controlled look for your event.

Work Out the Dimensions

The dimensions of pedestrian barriers and compliance signs vary depending on the type of barrier being used. If you are using a standard heavy-duty metal crowd barrier, make sure to go with 2.5 meter long and 1.10-meter high dimensions along with infill bars, which are spaced at 12.75 mm intervals.

This is an ideal dimension not only to keep people at bay but also to allow them to clearly see where they are going without creating any kind of obstruction. When it comes to installation, the pedestrian barrier is quite simple to install across various work platforms. It takes one person and very little time. This also gives you the advantage of moving it easily in case of emergency or while carrying out simple crowd management activities.