INDIANAPOLIS —
Eager to avoid the winter-weather disaster that hit last year’s Super Bowl, this year’s host city has developed a cold-crisis master plan.
It includes a stockpile of road salt, a beefed-up fleet of snow-removal trucks and a small army of sidewalk-clearers, equipped with their own snow shovels, who are standby.
But it was the unexpected warm weather that descended on Indianapolis this week that sparked a temporary crisis: Not enough portable toilets to handle the surge of early visitors to the open-air festival site known as Super Bowl Village.
Even that problem had a fast-response plan in place: The Super Bowl Social Media Command Center set up to monitor the social air waves picked up the portable toilets chatter and the problem was quickly resolved.
Super Bowl Host Committee members don’t want a replay of last year’s Super Bowl snafus, when a week-long blast of winter weather caught host city Dallas unprepared.
As a cold-weather city, Indianapolis is convinced it can do a better job with climate issues, if they hit.
But the big question for the host committee is how to get an expected 150,000 visitors in and out of the city and keep them happy while they are here
Here are some answers they’ve come up with:
• Harvest volunteer energy: Some 8,000 volunteers, clad in blue-and-white hand-made scarves, will offer hospitality on hyper-drive. Many are wearing “Ask Me”-emblazoned earmuffs as they stand on street corners looking for lost-looking visitors.
• Make the most of social media: Raidious, a local social media agency, was hired to listen in on what visitors were saying on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media sites. Operating from a command center in the heart of downtown, a staff of 50 monitors on duty 24/7 is feeding that information to Super Bowl “street team” charged with a fast-response to problems as they arise.
• Get people walking: There’s minimal mass transit in the city and only 750 taxi cabs licensed to operate during Super Bowl week. Cab fares have been raised to a series of flat rates designed to encourage visitors to either hoof it, or use alternate means, including free shuttle buses and the bicycle-drawn rickshaws known as pedicabs.
• Control traffic: All sorts of parking and traffic restrictions have already been put into place, including limiting downtown beer deliveries to early morning hours. Access to some streets near the stadium have been shut off, while traffic flow has been changed on others. Best place to go for traffic and parking information is to “Know Before You Go” on the Super Bowl host committee website, www.indianapolissuperbowl.com.
Maureen Hayden is the Indiana Statehouse bureau chief for CNHI, the parent company of the Tribune-Star. She can be reached at maureen.hayden@indianamediagroup.com.
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Indy Super Bowl has cold-crisis master plan
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