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

Table 5-9Components of Interagency AgreementsCOMPONENT• Advance planning duties and responsibilities• Day-of-event duties and responsibilities• Organization• Resource sharing• Funding reimbursement mechanisms• A West Virginia Turnpike policy, enactedin December 2002, allows Turnpikeofficials to open toll plazas for 15minutes any time vehicle queues extendat least three miles upstream of theplaza. After the 15-minute period ends,officials can determine whether thequeue dispersed or if another 15-minuteperiod is required. Under normal operations,Turnpike officials estimate that avehicle joining a three-mile queue takesapproximately 15 minutes to passthrough a toll plaza. Officials noted 15minor crashes occurred on the Sundayafter Thanksgiving in 2002, the Turnpike’sbusiest day of the year. (11)• State legislators in Maryland debated aproposed bill in 2003 to create a similarpolicy for the Chesapeake BayBridge. (12) The bill specifies suspendingtolls if a traffic queue extends more thanfive miles upstream of the toll plaza andis moving at less than 30 miles per hour.The increasing deployment of electronictolling may obviate the need for thesestrategies in the future.Public-Private Towing AgreementPrivate towing companies perform a specificfunctional activity in traffic incident management,that is, removal of disabled orwrecked vehicles, spilled cargo, and debrisfrom an incident site. Law enforcement andtraffic operations agencies alike have recognizedthe indispensable role private towingcompanies have in effecting incident removaland restoring the affected road sectionback to normal operation. Public agenciescommonly enter into agreements withone or more commercial towing companiesto secure on-call traffic incident clearanceservices, or at a minimum, the agenciesmaintain a contact list of local private towingcompanies.Traffic incident management represents akey consideration in event operations planning.Event planning team stakeholdersmay establish event-specific public-privatetowing agreements to secure on-site towingand recovery services. For instance, theCity of Cincinnati has established, under theCity rules and regulations for police rotationwreckers, a special event tow category. (13)The City defines a special event tow as“when tow operator remains with police officerfor a specified period of time towing ormoving vehicles as need arises.” The Cityregulation specifies a special event tow rateof $20.00 per tow or $35.00 per hour,whichever is greater.FEASIBILITY STUDYOverviewThe structure and approach of a plannedspecial event feasibility study resembles aTraffic Impact Study required for planneddevelopments, as illustrated in Figure 5-5.The figure shows the sequential steps inpreparing a feasibility study for a plannedspecial event.Table 5-10 provides an overview of the firstfive feasibility study components. The accuracyof one analysis influences that of another.Achieving predictability, a goal ofmanaging travel for planned special events,represents the focus of a feasibility studyeffort.5-16