One supervisor's report:
Other operational issues:
(e.g., passengers left behind, service delays, resources requested or needed but not available, etc.)
Numerous service delays, CBD was on “lockdown”, very little movement through town.
This event was a disaster for our system. There should have been reroutes for all our affected routes. I am sure this didn’t happen because we did not anticipate such a large attendance of participants. I was first stationed at the beginning of the ride at Jefferson/12th. Jefferson was blocked at Broadway at approx. 8:50pm and the ride did not actually begin until 10:05pm. I immediately put the line 6 on reroute (from Jeff/Broadway: L broadway, R clay, R 12th, L Jefferson and regular) The left turn on to Jefferson was do-able because the ride was making a right turn on to 12th from Jefferson. It took approx. 1 hr 25 minutes 11:30pm to get all participants through the starting line. Because there were so many participants ( many latecomers) the crowed occupied the streets of Park Ave from Jefferson up to Main st. and on Main St from Park ave all the way over to 6th ave. At times, 6th ave was blocked at Main due to this crowd overflowing from the starting line. As far as I know, the police did not accommodate us with any bump-throughs. We were fortunate that the ride started over an hour late as our service had reduced by that time. Any bus crossing Burnside on the bus mall was affected by this delay. Re-routes probably should have been worked on for our downtown buses after I reported on the air that there were thousands more to start and we were already 35 minutes into the ride. My rig was blocked in on 12th ave by riders (I was anticipating the procession taking 30 minutes max. and then moving on to my next location.) This was obviously not the case. I set out on foot down to the bus mall in an attempt to get our 6th ave buses on re-route to avoid going through Burnside. A good re-route would have been R stark, L naito Pkwy, R on to steel bridge approach, but when I got down to Naito Pkwy I found that the left turn was blocked by barricades. This appeared to be due to equipment being parked on Naito from the Grand Floral Parade. It appeared that police were aware of the need for an outlet from the CBD and were frantically working to open roads near the waterfront that had been closed all day due to the Grand Floral Parade. I don’t think anybody knew how large the crowd of participants was going to be. The weather was clear and warm and I am sure this was a contributing factor for the crowd.
I would recommend for next year, that we have reroutes established for all routes before the event and then we could put them into effect as needed. The plan was for all supervisors to manage one location until the tail came through and then move on to another location. This was impossible due to the length of the procession. We definitely need a new game plan next year if it attracts a crowd anything like this year. At the end of the night, supervisor Bynon and I swept the mall and did not come across anyone waiting for a bus that was not coming. Dispatch Worked their majic to make this happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment