Traffic Control

djgra79

My name is Graham & I love flashing lights!
Global moderator
Generous elf
Joined
Dec 27, 2011
Messages
2,161
Location
Cranbourne West
Display going well? Perhaps a little too well?!
What tips & tricks do you have that you can share with the group for safe and fair traffic management of your display?
Photos of items used such as cones, bollards, tape, fences etc, and where did you buy them from? Bunnings, RSEA or online retailer?
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand GO (safely!)
 

LawrenceDriveLights

Senior elf
Joined
Jan 16, 2018
Messages
581
Good idea for a thread dj.

As everyones house location is different and their displays layouts / styles / song selection etc are all different it would be good for a collection of tips and tricks.

Also I remember watching a great ACL mini presentation video with some information about this which I found really handy (https://auschristmaslighting.com/media/adelaide-mini-2017-brads-christmas-light-tips.250/)

Anyway here is what I come up

Background:
Location of our house in a residential street opposite a school and thus lots of room on the other side of the street, but still with neighbours who also have young family so this is something I also considered.
First year doing display so we wasn't on the traditional type christmas light list as such, we did do a small Halloween display this year which also a first for us.

I utilised some hints and tips I picked up from ACL for e.g., having a voice over message at the start on playlist asking people to not block driveways, consider neighbours, radio levels etc
I also followed this up with a message on out Tune To sign with no lights or music going every fifth song or so.

I didn't want anybody to enter our front yard so I used some plastic red & white chain to try and keep it with the festive colour chart) from Bunnings and I made up some small low shepherd type hooks to mark out the front yard and also had a couple of other sections to extend across our driveway (not shown in this pick)

View: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bm7mndb9eotnjy5/Photo%2030-11-18%2C%2012%2049%2010%20pm.jpg?dl=0


I also made a decision to limit the show run time from 8:30 pm (just as starts getting dark) to only 9:30 pm again to try and keep Neighbours happy etc, and I thought it is was easy to extend the show time past the "advertised" finish time rather than cutting it short and have people turn up and say, but hey it says show goes to 10:30 why isn't it on! and also if some people do turn up right near the finish time I could extend for a couple of more songs and they felt good as I extended show time just for them. This was another lesson I learnt from doing the small Halloween display.

So I had everything in place and ready to go.
The first week of December was good, a few cars each night parking across the road with their radio's tuned in etc, which was great and I was really happy people wanted to view our "creation". I was able to run most of my sequences during this week (about 45 minutes worth), and it I found it handy to be able to film some of them at his time.

Second week of December it started to pick up with traffic, was starting to get people parking directly in front our house blocking the view for the others so I implemented the "traffic cone" strategy with 5 cones (from a local engineering type shop which sells a bit of everything) I think there are about 400 mm high and nice and light s you can easily moved the stake of them around.

Here a pick of them during our Halloween display (for Oct 31st which we expected to get very busy)

View: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zsu7m6apxfbuxcx/Photo%2031-10-18%2C%2012%2043%2055%20pm.jpg?dl=0


I then for Christmas I extended the cone area just past my neighbours driveways which proved very handy to also stop people blocking my immediate neighbours.

This worked well expect for the Friday Night which was also part of the ACL zoom live stream share and discuss displays.
Well that night was a disaster, lots of traffic, I was caught out, starting getting cars driving along and stopping directly in front of house (despite the traffic cones). I was doing some traffic management as well and had to keep asking people to move on and suggest to them park down the road and you can view from across the road where some people had gathered and they could hear the music from peoples car radio's which was all good.

Well then there is always one person. They decided to stop directly in front of their house and started eating their McDonalds, I thought WTF this is not a drive in theatre. I kindly asked them to move on and they refused. So I said sorry you are blocking the street and cars trying to drive down the street started to honk their horns make the suggestion for this person to move on etc.
So out with the phone I go, pull up the fpp (Falcon Player) and shut the whole display down. "Old mate" who parked in front said some not pleasant Christmas words to me and drove off like a idiot. I waited a couple of minutes for the traffic to clear again and restarted show. Again traffic started to pile up again so I finished up the Display as it was starting to get a bit late and noisy (remember I have young family as well as Neighbours family etc).
Big Lesson learnt that night, I need to reduce show length or at least have a short show (three or four songs) schedules to deploy during peak times to move traffic on.

I was starting to think I had created a monster, remember this our first year doing this.

Third week of December traffic really started to pick up, again using traffic cones to stop people blocking front of our house, started to notice more and more cars parking further away down both sides of the road and prob not the ideal viewing positions for them, I stared reducing the playlist down to about 7 or 8 songs to encourage people to move on etc (also played Baby Shark but that didn't encourage them to move on).

This worked great during the weekdays and I mixed the playlist up each night and kept the show length to about 20 minutes or so.
There was good traffic flow and also had people coming and parking up in the prime parking spots 10 minutes before display start time.
So I introduced a "pre-show" just some bad elevator type jingle bell mix music and the tune to sign stating radio channel and start and finish times of display.

Then their was the "Friday night rain night no display) - a funny subject for another day.

Moving on - sorry this is turning into a novel.
Coming into the final week
Again traffic was picking up, a bit more but flowing ok, word etc getting out about Display as well as our new Facebook page getting likes and shared etc which include the usual info like start & finish times, radio channel etc, also reminding people not to park in front of driveways etc.

This was all running along well now, learnt to keep play list short during peak times etc.
I was starting to run the display a little longer each week as school was staring to finish up etc, finishing up around 10:30 is most notes.
I did have also a Goodnight voice over and thanks for coming etc to end display with, so people viewing got the hint to move on.

Well coming into the last couple of nights
I was expecting larger crowds due to social media etc (I actually knocked back a local paper article as I didn't really want the extra exposure at this point in time).

I then decided it was getting really hard for people to park and view display, and to help prevent people stopping I introduced a viewing area directly across the road.
I used some cones to mark this out and stop cars parking in front of this area, prob 15 metres wide or so.

I then grabbed a couple of small radios and located them on this side of the road, we have a school opposite us.
We also advised this on out FB page etc
This worked great, people parked up come down the viewing spot and during the last couple of nights it made for a really nice atmosphere with adults watching and chatting, kids watching and dancing etc and I had one of the moments "Yep this is worth all the hassles, time etc"

Here is a pic, there is a cone in front of the little red car which you can't see but you get the idea

Crowd actually got a bit bigger after his photo and starting getting more traffic driving past, but in all most people really well behaved only had one or two cars try to stop and they kindly moved on very quickly with no hassles etc

View: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rs3s8osvu2qudc0/Photo%2022-12-18%2C%209%2024%2033%20pm.jpg?dl=0


So thats has been my experience this year

Oh yes finally I decided not to run the display on Christmas eve, this again as ourselves and neighbours have young family's and we also have Christmas eve stuff to do.
I will have a short message on tune to sign saying "Sorry no display tonight", and we also had this on our fb page last night to advise it was going to be our last night etc.


Sorry if a long reply but this is what I learnt in summary;
Keep song list short during peak times
Use of cones to stops people parking directly in front of display
Try and make a viewing area if display gets very popular
Don't be afraid to turn display off to move the traffic on, this may be a bit extreme but it did help.
and the a saying someone told me once "If you can keep 50% of people happy half the time you are doing well".
 
Last edited:

djgra79

My name is Graham & I love flashing lights!
Global moderator
Generous elf
Joined
Dec 27, 2011
Messages
2,161
Location
Cranbourne West
Well this is what I have implemented this evening ready for a rush for Christmas Eve:
View media item 904All purchased from Bunnings:
Bollards: https://www.bunnings.com.au/builders-edge-safety-1150mm-safety-bollard-with-6kg-base_p1091293
30M flags: https://www.bunnings.com.au/brutus-30m-safety-flag-hanks_p1091338
Cone: https://www.bunnings.com.au/builders-edge-safety-300mm-hard-safety-marker-cone_p1091297
(Hard to see in pic but near my parked car are some service pits that stick out of the ground, so placed a bollard and cone near these to make them more visible to stay away from)
All this combined with a couple of posts to my Facebook page with the below parking guide and hopefully we'll have a trouble free night!
View media item 905
 
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