Milwaukee, WI, USA's Summerfest Advanced Parking Guidance System

This third and final feature in a series upon Milwaukee, WI, USA-site of the ITE 2006 Annual Meeting and Exhibit-focuses upon the City's plans to implement an advanced parking guidance a whole (APGS). Traffic congestion along the lakefront in Milwaukee swells during the City's popular summer festivals, the largest of which is known as Summerfest The APGS will provide real-time information about parking availability to help visitors find a parking space and bring congestion, as well as assist the use of a shuttle bus end the downtown and connecting to the festival moulds

INTRODUCTION

The City of Milwaukee, WI, USA, has a lengthy rich relationship with its lakefront and prosperously has preserved much of it for public use. single of themost popular lakefront destinations is Henry Maier Festival Park, site of the festival sods A different event is held each weekend during the summer. Themost popular occurrence is Summerrest, a highly prosperous 10-day series of concerts and circumstances held every year in late June and early July

The festival turfs are bounded by Lake Michigan upon the east, Interstate 794/Lincoln Memorial Drive upon the west, Clybourn Street upon the north and the Milwaukee River/Port of Milwaukee entrance upon the south (see Figure 1) These natural and manmade barriers restrict the amount of available parking near the soils Traffic congestion in the immediate area during Summerfest and more [i]or[/i] less of the other weekend festivals is considerable.

The City received a Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grant to restore this traffic congestion and improve air quality by dint of implementing an advanced traveler information combination of parts to form a whole for parking. This feature describes the conceptual design for the planned first phase of the Summerfest Advanced Parking Guidance a whole (APGS).

The APGS is intended to provide motorists with real-time traveler information about available parking in the downtown area. This information will help motorists make informed decisions about their travel way reducing the amount of circulating traffic caused by the agency of motorists searching for parking.

The APGS also will further the use of the Summerfest shuttle bus that races through Milwaukee's downtown along Wisconsin Avenue between Interstate 43 and the lakefront. The shuttle bus provides an of the best quality alternative for festival attendees who park downtown at single outed parking facilities within a one-block walk of the shuttle bus course

The APGS conceptual design proces used a combination of parts to form a wholes engineering approach. This involved developing a universal of operations document that described the parts and responsibilities of partner agencies; a whole functional requirements that defined "what" the combination of parts to form a whole should do; and a high-level overall combination of parts to form a whole design. Building upon the conceptual design, a plans, specifications and estimates (PS&E) package was prepared to raise integrate and test the a whole in 2006.

During and after implementation of the APGS, the a whole will be tested against the constituents of the conceptual design to demonstrate that the a whole requirements have been met and that the overall operation of the a whole is consistent with the goals station forth in the concept of operations.

CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS

The general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of operations describes, at a high horizontal the Summerfest APGS from the perspective of combination of parts to form a whole users. Starting with the throw out goals, it identifies the participants in the Summerfest APGS; parts and responsibilities for each partner agency; and areas of interagency integration and cooperation.

To guide the disentanglement of the project, stakeholders from all partner agencies were invited to subserve on either the executive or technical committee. The executive committee provided policy-level guidance tor the overall project; the technical committee gave technical guidance upon various key design issues. To provide a focused direction for the throw out the committees helped define a number of goals for the project:

* bring traffic congestion and improve air quality;

* Improve safety, especially for pedestrians;

* advance the use of Summerfest shuttle buses;

* Maximize the use of existing downtown parking facilities; and

* Provide timely, accurate and useful traveler information to visitors.

Partner Agency characters and Responsibilities

A number of agencies and organizations were involved in the unravelling of the Summerfest APGS arid will continue to play critical characters during the implementation, operation and ongoing maintenance of the combination of parts to form a whole They include the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDO I), various public and private parking facilities, die Milwaukee shire Transit System, the Milwaukee Police Department, the Milwaukee shire Sheriff's Department and various information service providers of that kind as local businesses and downtown organizations.

Interagency Agreements

The City has pierceed into interagency agreements with participating private parking facility owners/operators. These agreements detail each party's responsibilities in the disclosure operations and maintenance of the a whole The City will be responsible tor all operations and maintenance outlays for system infrastructure located within public rights or way.