All-Star Game Traffic : All-Star Game a Major Test for Traffic Movers

When the first All-Star pitch is hurled in Anaheim Stadium on Tuesday, a team of traffic experts will be tuned instead into the action--or lack of it--outside the ballpark.

Working behind a computer panel in Anaheim’s new high-tech Traffic Management Center, city and state traffic engineers will monitor the volume and speed of the cars expected to deluge local streets and move roughly at the pace of a lawsuit. By watching a color-coded computer map, operators will be able to spot bottlenecks and, with the push of a button, adjust the timing of signal lights or dispatch traffic cops to get things moving.

Congestion is nothing new to Anaheim. As the home of Disneyland, the Anaheim Convention Center and the stadium used by the California Angels and the Los Angeles Rams, it is a destination for 15 million out-of-town visitors each year.

But travelers to the 5:30 p.m. All-Star contest are expected to add 20,000 vehiclesto surrounding city streets, doubling the normal rush-hour level and running head-on into peak commuter traffic. As a result, the All-Star game will offer a major-league test of the eight-month-old traffic-management system.

“We’ve handled sold-out crowds to football and baseball games at the stadium before,” said Donald W. Dey, city associate traffic engineer in charge of All-Star auto control. “But we’ve never had the big crush at the start of the game come at the same time as rush-hour traffic.”

The Traffic Management Center, a $5-million cross between an air-traffic control tower and a railroad switching station, could ease the crunch, cut travel time, and reduce fuel consumption and frustration. Modeled on a system installed by Los Angeles to prevent snarls around the Coliseum during the 1984 Olympics, Anaheim’s traffic center is a state-of-the-art system that is being closely observed by other cities in Orange County and across the country.

The system uses up-to-the-minute data transmitted by more than 100 sensors embedded in city intersections and translated by computer into map form on a four-foot-square projection screen in the traffic center, located in the Willdan Building next to the Anaheim Civic Center. Closed-circuit cameras, which will have the ability to pan or zoom in on traffic at 16 major intersections beginning this fall, will add live pictures to help operators interpret the computer data.

When the traffic system is complete in 1991, 12 electronic message signs along heavily traveled streets will also alert motorists to congestion ahead or suggest alternative parking when event lots are full. At a time when less state and federal aid is available to expand overloaded roadways, the traffic-control center will allow Anaheim to better use existing resources.

“As traffic demand continues to increase and we run out of space and money, we just have to manage the (road) system as efficiently as possible,” said Court Burrell, deputy district director for Caltrans in Orange County. Burrell praised Anaheim’s system as “a forerunner of what’s coming in California.”

A Caltrans supervisor will work alongside Anaheim traffic engineers for the first time Tuesday, adding All-Star and commuter-congestion information on the Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange freeways to computer-supplied local data, Dey said.

One problem that computers can’t tackle is pedestrian tie-ups, which sometimes block streets around the stadium for 30 minutes or more around game time.

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‘When pedestrians control the streets instead of cars, there’s not much we can do.’

--Donald W. Dey

Traffic engineer

“We can adjust signal light timing to favor flow in one direction if there’s a backup,” Dey said. “But pedestrians are the ultimate challenge. The computers can’t pick them up. When pedestrians control the streets instead of cars, there’s not much we can do.”

Dey, who studied traffic engineering at the University of

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terloo in Canada before moving to California, a boom area for his expertise, has learned to pretty much avoid traffic jams. For the novice, however, he offered some All-Star tips.

The best way to avoid long delays on your way to the game is to arrive at the stadium between 2:30 p.m., when parking lots will open, and 3:30 p.m, before commuter traffic builds. Otherwise, fans should expect backups “almost as if there was a traffic accident,” he said.

Although the most clogged intersection in the city is Harbor Boulevard and Katella Avenue, at the southeast corner of Disneyland, just about any intersection on State College Boulevard is a runner-up as game-time approaches at the stadium. Instead of entering the Big A via either of the two entrances on State College, Dey suggested the southern entrance on Orangewood Avenue.

Better still, he offered conspiratorially, is a route generally known only to locals. There is a back entrance and exit to the stadium off Douglass Road, a north-south street just east of the Orange Freeway. Before the game, all lanes of the road will be made one-way leading into stadium parking lots and, afterwards, will be reversed to accommodate exiting vehicles.

“Douglass is also least impacted by pedestrians since there is no other parking nearby,” Dey said. “It moves pretty smoothly when all the other entrances are crawling.”

But don’t tell anyone where you heard it.

ON DECK FOR THE ALL-STAR GAME Here is a list of All-Star events open to those who attend Angels games at Anaheim Stadium.

TODAY:

Olympic medalist Janet Evans is grand marshal of an hourlong parade featuring bands, floats and Walt Disney characters.

THURSDAY

Bob Hope is honored in a salute to the Armed Forces, featuring Air Force jets, World War I tanks and military choruses.

FRIDAY

Gene Autry is honored as Western movie stars including Clayton Moore, Buddy Ebsen and Pat Buttram arrive by horseback or stagecoach.

SATURDAY

Fan Appreciation Day.

SUNDAY

Old-Timers Game.

MONDAY

All-Star Workout and Skills Competition.

TUESDAY

60th All-Star game.