At a decentralized festival using the whole city as an exhibition venue, visitor Transport between hubs determines the event’s success or failure. Dutch Design Week (DDW) 2026 chose sponsored Polestar cars to carry visitors waiting at six designated pickup points or making individual On-demand telephone calls, instead of large shuttle buses on fixed routes.
From the lead on-site operator’s perspective, On-demand Transport with many vehicles moving along non-standard routes may look like innovative customer service. But unless the Back-end Dispatch control system is precisely designed, it creates the disasters of missed passengers and tangled vehicle bottlenecks throughout the event. The promise to collect people when they call must be supported by a coldly rigorous control system, not the planner’s intuition.
1. Centralize Dispatching: "Taking requests and dispatching vehicles are different jobs"
DDW had to handle both people waiting at six fixed pickup points and scattered telephone requests from other exhibition venues simultaneously.
- Prevent Double Dispatch: staff at a fixed pickup point calling a car while the telephone control room receives another visitor’s request and sends a vehicle to the same area is a primary drain on transport resources. The planning team must strictly separate Call Center intake from the Dispatcher’s vehicle allocation, display all requests on one integrated control dashboard and centralize dispatch authority.
- Pinpoint each Pick-up Point: a request saying “I will board at DDP” is useless on site. Map in advance the pins for places where vehicles can stop for pickup and Drop-off, such as the car park, South Gate 3 or Design Lab’s first floor. Call handlers must accept requests only by the agreed pin numbers to prevent drivers and passengers missing one another as No-shows.
2. The illusion of vehicle Turnaround: calculate physical limits
Small-vehicle transport using VIP or sponsor cars is more agile than a large bus, but its Capacity per trip is absolutely limited.
- The waiting-time (ETA) trap: DDW’s notice that a car may not arrive immediately when it rains is an excellent defensive mechanism. When 10 vehicles operate, planners must calculate [available seats per vehicle, usually 3 × average trips per hour] and conservatively estimate the daily Max Capacity.
- Failover during a traffic surge: a peak-time surge in calls immediately paralyses vehicle transport. If waits exceed a threshold, for example 30 minutes, on-site staff must immediately Cut-off new requests and activate a secondary manual that Bypasses the service by directing visitors to the nearest public-transport route or walking map.
3. The Last Call Rule-set: "What an 18:00 finish really means"
Operating hours of 11:00–18:00 do not mean visitors can board a car at 18:00.
- Separate the dispatch cutoff from the end of driving: the first agreement with the agency in a transport-operations contract must be the Last Call time for accepting a final dispatch request. Normally set the call cutoff 30 minutes before the event ends, at 15:30, then operate only Clearance of remaining waiting passengers and vehicle routes back to base. This prevents administrative overtime risks and visitors making wasted journeys.
- Rotate driver breaks and charging Buffers: with electric vehicles (EVs), charging time and drivers’ statutory Breaks are Downtime when a vehicle is completely out of service. Spare vehicles and relief shifts to cover this gap must be included in the procurement schedule.
4. A four-stage On-demand Transport operating protocol for practitioners
When introducing VVIP protocol transport or call-based travel services rather than shuttle buses, the planning team must establish these four-stage criteria.
| Stage | Actions |
|---|---|
| [Stage 1: Map Pickup/Drop-off (PUDO) coordinates] | Confirm every hub’s boarding and alighting areas as GPS pins, and agree vehicle-access width, turning radius and permission to stop for five minutes with police/municipalities in advance. |
| [Stage 2: Establish central control and one channel] | Collect all requests arriving by on-site staff radio and visitor telephone on one digital board, such as a spreadsheet, and allow only one main Dispatcher or dispatch lead to issue driving orders to drivers. |
| [Stage 3: Give ETAs and manage expectations] | When visitors call, communicate the vehicle’s ETA with at least 10 minutes of generous margin for congestion, and immediately explain cancellation and alternative routes if dispatch is delayed. |
| [Stage 4: Apply Cut-off and Clearance times] | Stop accepting calls 30 minutes before the official finish, and close daily transport control only after Sign-off reporting the final vehicle’s completed operation. |
A planner’s note: the control tower, not the drivers, runs ten vehicles
A festival plan showing a sponsor’s impressive electric cars does not complete transport planning.
On site, vehicles do not teleport at visitors’ will. Carrying a passenger from Hub A to Hub B requires an intense battle of wits at an invisible Dispatch Center, calculating road bottlenecks, the previous passenger’s delayed alighting and overlaps with the next call’s route to manage traffic. Shuttle planning ends not with a vehicle-rental contract, but with the separation of radio channels.
Conditions for applying this elsewhere
For on-demand connections among venues, verify meeting points, usable seats and turnaround with the supplier.
Information not established
Fleet size, actual dispatch intervals, average waits and last-call/final-boarding conditions were not published.
Reference material
- DDW official travel guidance · Six pickup points, telephone requests, hours and waiting conditions (checked 20 October)
- DDW official release · Polestar partnership and 17–25 October 2026 operating plan (16 July)
- Hermes transport operator · DDW 2026 buses and Design Rides guidance (checked 20 October)
- Sponsorreport · DDW/Polestar partnership and inter-venue transport (23 July)
Have a correction or additional evidence? Request a correction