Traffic Nightmare

[jstorms]

Problem: On a few night’s during our first year traffic was out of control. It stretched for ½ mile, which put it all the way out on the busy street. Some people waited over an hour to see the lights. It probably also annoyed a few neighbors, which is very bad.

After being on the local news our home started getting some traffic, but nothing serious and we were happy. Then about 15 minutes after our house was featured on Bill O’Reilly’s the Factor in the Patriots & Pinheads segment we had a big traffic problem. Then we kept seeing our house on TV and the traffic became worse.

Fox:

GMA:

Plus we were aired on CNN a few times, and on a few local news channels.

I thought being on TV would be really cool and fun, but it caused a traffic nightmare, and when you realize it could cause your HOA to shut you down really isn't fun at all.

Traffic:

It was our first year doing an animated show to music. Some carolers came by and told use the line was all the way to the main road (half mile). I knew I had to fix this problem before the neighbors came with torches and pitch forks to tar and feather me.


This image taken almost a half mile from my house.

By luck my house is physically located in a good spot for Christmas light displays.

• 
  * Wide lot for a single story house. More cars can park in front at once. 6-8 cars can have a good view at a time to see the show.
  * No across the street neighbors, just a 6’ stone, sound wall.
  * Wide street. Cars can be parked on both sides with room for cars to get through in the middle.
  From my house to the cross street is just shy of 0.5 miles.
  * Sidewalks on both sides so people can park in the cul-du-sacs and walk over to see the lights.
  * On the right side of the road there are only 2 driveways.
  

Solution: The real solution would have been to avoid the news, but we were past that point. We were able to “throttle” the show to get more cars through and keep the line down.

First you can figure out how many cars an hour your show can handle with the following formula.

Cars/Hour = ( 60 / Length of show) * Cars viewing at a time

We averaged 6 cars viewing the show at a time. As long as someone didn’t park right in front of the house. If someone parks right in front then only about 4 cars can see and seriously slows the line down. It also makes the line angry, people honk horns, get out of cars and in general creates the kind of problems that neighbors hate. So it was important that people not park in front of the house. The solution that worked the best was to put luminaries along the curb on the street.

Next, I created a drop sequence where I turn off the lights and give the little speech about “please don’t turn around in driveways, block intersections, honk horns, play radios too loud, etc.” During the drop sequence cars will sense the show is over and leave and the line advances. The drop sequence is a musical sequence with just me talking, and I just leave the channels blank, no timings, just the sound.

Then, I put together a few versions of the show of different lengths.

The full show took 17 minutes including the drop sequence.

Cars/Hour = ( 60 / 17) * 6 = 21.2

So with my full show I could at max process 21 cars every hour. On busy nights it didn’t take long for the line to back up. By coming up with multiple versions of the show, with different lengths I could speed up or slow down the line.

17 minute show = 21 cars/hour (SLOWEST: Full show)
10 minute show = 36 cars/hour
4 minute show = 90 cars/hour (1 decent song and drop sequence)
3 minute show = 120 cars/hour  (FASTEST: 1 short song and drop sequence)

So for the busy nights I set up the following shows to have no start or end sequences, so I can start and end them without people noticing.

I would start the evening with a start-up show vs. a start-up sequence. Then I would follow that with the full version of the show. As the evening goes on I go outside to see how the line is looking. When the line starts growing I speed up the show, and when the line is dying off I speed it up.

[edvas69]

I had similar issues last year, so i had to cut the show down to one song to keep traffic flowing. The unfortunate thing about this that is with only 1 song it becomes repetative and also usually a song will only lend itself to one type of sequencing.

This year i have planned differently, i will have 1 song that is 6.30 minutes long but it contains a mix of 10 songs so this allows me to do many different types of sequencing and also allows me to keep the traffic flowing whilst the audience get to still see a show that is not too boring. And of coase I break up the show with a voice over breifly reminding people of some basic rules.

[Surfing4Dough]

jstorms wrote:

Solution: The real solution would have been to avoid the news...

Can't help your specific problem but want to point out something very important you said to prevent this problem for others that has been very successful for me. Newbies especially can easily fall into this trap since you want "everybody" to see and hear about your display. Once you "hit the press" there is no turning back, as you said. Would take a couple years without a display to probably break that cycle, which isn't desirable to most. I remember somebody here saying that they usually had 3-4 cars at a time, until one day somebody called them and told them that they saw their house on the local news the night before. He immediately went and looked outside, and about died when he saw about 75 cars lined up down the street! :shock: The crowd will grow plenty on its own just by word of mouth. I specifically turn down media requests, and often tell people to not advertise to the media on our behalf (actually thinking about adding a voiceover from the Demented Elf saying just that). In my opinion, traffic is the one issue that would ever force the shutdown of my display, so don't want to ever go there.

Now back to adding tips for helping those that already have traffic problems...

[jstorms]

The best practice here is to keep your lights out of the media. You want people to come sure, but do you really want EVERYONE for 50 miles around to come? Okay, sure you do, but your neighbors probably won't appreciate it.

The take home here is to avoid it in the first place.

...but we're already there so now what?

So I'm working to un-pimp my house. The goal here is to provide some really great Christmas lights, without overrunning the neighborhood with traffic.

1. Know what to do in advance if traffic gets nutty.

I have a traffic plan above, and when we get closer to the season I'll contact the local police department with it. I did this last year and it did help. Sooner or later someone will call the cops on you, best to do it first.

2. De-list my address

This means taking my address of my website, removing myself from the Tacky Light Tour and other lists. (see how much fun this is? -- don't pimp your lights!)

3. I did search on my street address in Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Lycos (old school here). For each place mentioning the lights I sent them a polite email thanking them for their nice story, but out of courtesy to my neighbors to edit their story not to include our address.

I wrote down each hit and so far I have very positive feedback and most have removed my address. I'm doing this early so there is time for it to filter out of Google. May never get it out all the way, but trying.

[JeffF]

We had to go dark last year because of a news story. Kicker was they weren't suppose to report our location or name and while they didn't come right out and give our address... they did report our last name and the town we live in.

The next day our phone started ringing and the gas station down the road quickly became tired of answering the "Doya know where that light house is?" question. That evening we had standstill traffic in both directions(which isn't safe on our road) so we shut down. The next night... it happened again as soon as we turned the lights on so we shut down 'til the following weekend(which was the final weekend).

This year we are scaling down and are not having an animated show running every evening. We are having a button that people "in the know" can press and make it animated... but that will only go out to close friends and family.