managing travel for planned special events - FHWA Operations ...

Table 4-14Louisville, KY Criteria for Providing FreeServices for a Special Event (28)CRITERIA• Ability of the City to provide all or part ofrequested support services.• Extent to which the event is economically,socially, and culturally beneficial to the community.• Intended use by the sponsoring organizationof any revenue over and above expenditures.• Impact of the event (positive or negative) onnormal commercial activities.• Extent to which the event contributes towardthe promotion of tourism.deployed temporarily during the specialevent only. Table 4-15 discusses these technologiesand implementation alternatives inmore detail. Joining these technologies toour transportation system will save lives,save time, and save money. (6) In its infancy,ITS addressed incident management, butover time, it has become an application ofmanagement strategies to improve mobilityin everyday responsibilities of transportationmanagers of various modes. Mobility maybe defined as ability and knowledge to travelfrom one location to another using a multimodalapproach. ITS not only benefits thetransportation managers, but other serviceproviders such as emergency service providers(e.g., police, fire, ambulance) and supportproviders such as towing services. Inshort, ITS has become a significant enablerfor operating and managing the transportationnetwork. ITS is a tool for transportationmanagers, and as such, it augments themany non-technical activities to plan andmanage an event.At one time, ITS was characterized as technologylooking for a problem. Over theyears, transportation managers realized theneed to first identify needs and problems,and then associated solutions, usually technological,to those needs. As such, ITS applicationsare grouped into services they canprovide, or more simply as functions. In therealm of managing planned special events,there are a number of functional areas thattechnology can support. The following sectionsdescribe these functional areas ingreater detail.Traffic ManagementTraffic management is the most commonfunction associated with special event planningand management. It includes the realtimedetection, surveillance, and managementof traffic conditions. In a typical eventmanagement scenario, managers and operatorswould monitor traffic, pedestrian, andparking conditions in real-time using varioustechnologies, and modify control strategiessuch as modifying traffic signal and rampmeter timing, transit priority, opening gatesfor high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane access,to name just a few. This function alsoforms the basis for collecting much of theinformation communicated to travelers.There are a number of specific managementstrategies that encompass traffic management:• Arterial traffic management differsconsiderably from that of the freeway.While the basics are similar – detect orsurvey, verify, respond and inform – thestrategies and tools are not. As a rule,streets do not have any available capacitycompared to the using of a freewayshoulder, for instance. Parking can beremoved, but there is an economic andsocial price to pay to remove parking.Two-way streets can be made to operatein one direction, but this, too, can comeat significant cost.Successful arterial traffic managementresults from utilizing every bit of roadwaycapacity and adapting to changingtraffic conditions. Typically, streets are4-26