By james art 
GARDEN CITY, Idaho — On game days at Boise State, police aren’t the only ones monitoring traffic around campus.
I’m your Boise State Neighborhood Reporter Jessica Davis, in Garden City, where the Ada County Highway District plays a big role in keeping fans safe around the stadium.
- ACHD monitors 17 to 20 cameras to manage traffic on game day.
- Will Lloyd, assistant traffic engineer, monitors these cameras on game day and adjusts to the flow of traffic coming and going to the game.
- Major traffic hotspots include Broadway and University, Capital and University, and Myrtle Street.
(Below is the transcript of the broadcast story)
“Add that to about an hour and 15 minutes, that gives us about 15 minutes into the game,” says Will Lloyd.
Traffic is definitely congested before a BSU game, and the Ada County Highway District takes the time to monitor 17 to 20 cameras to make sure game day traffic flows smoothly.
Will Lloyd says: “It’s usually around the hour to the hour when we see a lot of people start to come in, so I like to get the programs in a bit before that. That way, they can sync up and everything goes smoothly, and they know what they’re doing by the time everyone gets there.”
Will Lloyd is the Assistant Traffic Operations Engineer for ACHD.
He says there’s usually the same stream of traffic each game day, so they program traffic for one game and use the same programming for others.
Lloyd says, “you can kind of predict how many vehicles you’re going to have coming from a certain direction or what time people are going to leave and how many people are going to leave. So things like that, rather than programming the same thing over and over again, we just write down what we programmed once, so that way we can download it at the intersection and it will do the exact same thing that it did the last time road.”
Broadway and University, Capital and University and Myrtle Street are what Lloyd describes as hotspots, the areas that typically get a lot of traffic on game day.
Looking at one of the traffic cameras, Lloyd says, “the left turn southbound is longer than I’d like it to be, but it usually gets quite long, it’s the main entry point to the university, but let’s see if I can to help touch.”
After the game is when they see the most traffic because everyone leaves at the same time.
Lloyd says backups will usually always happen, but traffic sensors, cameras and engineers like Lloyd can control the flow to ensure everyone gets home safely and on time.
“Know that there are many people doing the exact same thing you are doing and we are here to do everything we can to make sure you get there safely, but make sure you have a little patience because everyone is trying to get to the same place you are at,” says Lloyd.