Citation

Lassacher S, Veneziano D, Albert S, Ye Z. Transp. Res. Rec. 2009; 2099: 85-93.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.3141/2099-10

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Planned special events (PSE), such as sporting events and concerts, produce nonrecurring congestion as attendees simultaneously attempt to exit the event and overload the local transportation network. These types of events can have a significant impact on traffic operations, particularly in small urban and rural environments, where limited infrastructure is available to access and egress the PSE venue. The research presented here applied a variety of traffic management strategies to manage congestion resulting from American football games at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, in fall 2007. These strategies included the provision of real-time travel information, road closures, traffic signal retiming, and real-time traffic monitoring. Results indicated that these strategies could be successfully applied in a rural community to manage the congestion arising from PSEs. For example, results indicated that signal retiming and manual traffic control strategies allowed for improvements in traffic flow on approaches that served game traffic.