The Big Game, Tourists, Traffic and Your Employees’ Commute
When the Super Bowl comes to town, it will bring with it 10 days of events and over a million visitors. One thing it will also bring…traffic, affecting all parts of the city, including Buckhead.
As a matter of fact, the Buckhead Community Improvement District (BCID), which hires off-duty police officers to direct commuters, is bracing for what its chairman called “horrific” traffic for the week of festivities prior to the Feb. 3 NFL football championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium downtown.
The BCID hires off-duty officers to direct commuters, especially out of parking garages during the 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. rush hour. Those officers likely will be on Super Bowl security duty, being pulled into service as part of the event’s massive security plan. Tony Peters, BCID Capital Projects Implementation Manager, said that means “we will, more than likely, not be able to have our regular police officers” for the entire work week prior to the Super Bowl, Jan. 28 through Feb. 1.
“So it’ll be a tough week,” said BCID chairman David Allman, who is also president of the real estate firm Regent Partners. He predicted traffic “will be horrific.”
Denise Starling, executive director of Livable Buckhead, “Many people are unaware that the Super Bowl is a 10-day event, not just the Sunday game.” Livable Buckhead is calling on employers to let people work from home. Starling said businesses should “treat it a lot like the Olympics.” The 1996 Summer Olympics, held in Atlanta, are widely remembered as a time of wide-open highways due to commuters being scared away from downtown and people leaving town to rent out their homes.
Telework as the Solution
The best commute is one that only involves a click. You don’t need a crystal ball to picture what the commute will look like with a million extra folks between your employees and the office. So if your company has a telework program, help everyone by using it. We’ll even sing your praises if you pledge to promote telework during this time.
If you don’t already have a telework program in place, we can help you with our quick start guide, as well as free professional telework consultation to help get right from the beginning.
