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Dallas prepares for eclipse traffic, crowds
To avoid gridlock the Dallas Office of Emergency Management encourages employers to treat April 8 like a snow day, with only essential workers heading into the office.
DALLAS - Experts recommend having a full tank of gas if you plan to be on the roads on April 8th, the day of the Great North American Eclipse.
Travis Houston, the new director of the City of Dallas' Office of Emergency Management, says he started planning for the total solar eclipse over Dallas a year ago.
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"The one thing we know 100% sure is the moon will pass over the sun, and it will get dark. But there are a lot of other variables, we are always looking at what is the worst case scenario. If you plan for that, an you hope for the best, That is our whole philosophy in emergency management," Houston said.
The biggest concern is to keep traffic moving.
"Making sure we understand how to keep ingress an egress active for first responders. How do we take care of stranded motorists, if that is an issue, and then how do we communicate to the public don't stop on the road to look at the eclipse," Houston said.
In the total solar eclipse of 2017, that stretched from Oregon to South Carolina, the largest city in the path of totality was Nashville.
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Some areas then experienced gas shortages.
"It is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anytime you start talking about gas shortages it makes people say, I've got to go get gas, and it comes true. I don't know that we will have as big of a challenge with that in Dallas itself in a big urban core like this," he said. "Everyone in Dallas has experienced gridlock rush hour traffic. We know sometimes you can sit in traffic for some time around 5 o'clock. I think it is just when that gets extended and vehicles break down or run out of gas, or people that are stuck on the side of the road. It's the planning to make sure you have a way to address that that is really important. So that has been a big focus of our planning."
Houston encourages employers to treat April 8 like a snow day, with only essential workers heading into the office.
"If it is easy for an employer to do, I think it makes sense, not just from traffic standpoint, but a getting business done standpoint. You will probably have a lot more work starting at 8:00 and ending at 5:00 p.m. if your employees are working from home that day," he said.
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The Dallas Fire and Police Departments say they are staffing for the day like they do for other large scale events, but, in this case, there might be several crowded areas instead of one central location.
"Extensive planning and that's not only between our divisions: patrol, our speciality units, but it is also working with state, other local departments, city departments to make sure everything is smooth," said Dallas Police Department spokeswoman Kristin Lowman.
Houston says officials in Nashville said that the worst traffic tie-ups happened after the eclipse, since many people arrived days in advance of the eclipse, but then all started to head out at once.
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He urged families to have something to do after the eclipse is over to wait out traffic and avoid gridlock.