City of Biloxi, MS Police and Fire videos, 3 Oct 2018

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From YouTube: Police chief outlines Cruisin' traffic plan

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Biloxi Police Chief John Miller says Cruisin' The Coast and the crowds it attracts has led Biloxi to implement a traffic plan similar to the one used for other major events, such as Mardi Gras, St. Patrick's Day, Scrapin' the Coast and Spring Break. A phase of the plan would involve reducing traffic to one lane eastbound and one lane westbound, but Miller says police may not even have to do that. But cones will be in the roadway just in case. To read more about Cruisin' The Coast 2018 in Biloxi, visit www.biloxi.ms.us/cones-to-make-appearance-at-cruisin-this-year/

A

With Biloxi Police Chief, John, Miller, John cruising the coast is in town 22nd annual tonight is Tuesday. Wednesday is when things are gonna start picking up. What message do you have for cruisers I want.

B

People to be patient I want to I want to understand what we're trying to do this year. The traffic plan has changed a little bit. I, don't expect that the rubber cones in the roadway are going to be popular, but they absolutely there's nothing that we can do about it except setup to try to control traffic. If.

A

We have to, and your biggest fear on, controlling traffic is what the.

B

Biggest fear is to try to get emergency services where we need them. If we have to get them there, there's going to be two lanes East and two lanes West we have no. We have. We have no ideas about trying to close those those to show people.

A

Where the Coons are gonna, be the.

B

Cones are going to be from from Porter Avenue I'm. Sorry, the Commons was gonna, be from the I, want an off ramp all the way to the bees Road if you're going westbound, if you're coming eastbound they're gonna be from the bees Road all the way to wide Avenue and they're gonna. Stop it wide. Avenue reason for that is we're.

B

Gonna have designated turnarounds, and one of them is right down here and so someone's traveling and they decide they want to turn around and go back through the cruise again they'll be able to turn around here. So if we had cones all the way down, they wouldn't be able to do that. This.

A

Is a great group every year it is.

B

It's a really great people. They have a good time. The nine.

A

B

Nine percent of the time they abide by the rules they abide by the law. Usually, if we have a problem, it's not a registered Cruiser, it's usually a spectator or someone who's not registered. That.

A

So this year, they're expecting 9,000 cruisers and that's one of the reasons you needed this traffic plan. Didn't it weirds a good. They talked about capping.

B

Lesser men, you know we've talked for years about you know the reach the point where infrastructure can't handle well we're past that we are past that and they said well, we'll cap it. Well, let's not, let's be realistic, there's no way to really camp it. Then you can cap the amount of cruisers that you're going to allow to register, but, like I said a minute ago, the cruise is not the problem, so we can't stop people coming into Biloxi and say: hey boys he's full come in, so there's really no way to cap it.

B

So what we can do, though, just think outside the box and try to set up a traffic plan where, if we have to control traffic we can, if we have to get emergency services somewhere, we can have traffic gridlock sand, it stops. We can get it moving again, pretty quick. How.

A

Are people going to know if we go to the traffic plan, we're going to have a lot.

B

Of signage up, certainly if they use an Apple Uxie app that they'll they'll get the message. There they'll see the signs and that's another another issue: please pay close attention to the signage. The signage is going to tell you everything you need to know if you're traveling westbound and you decide you want to get over on the service drop or shark heads and some of the restaurants are there's going to be places for you to do that. So you have to watch the signage. You know: okay, here's a spot where I can get over and.

A

What we're asking people to do is if you want to get traffic advisories text biloxi, be aiello, xi2, triple eight triple seven: that's b, ILO xi2, triple 8 triple seven. Okay, john showed me the overview of the downtown Biloxi block party, which is going to be Wednesday from 8:00 until two o'clock, but you're gonna have people in there at 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning right.

B

Yeah well, people will have our guys out there between 4:30 and 5:00, and we're not letting people in yet between 4:30 and 5:00. My people will be staging all right, so we have some extra. We have some extra parking parking this year. The old the this slot here, which was the old federal courthouse is, is, is now going to be parking. It's paved, it's ready. It's ready to park on then you've got the you've got the MLK Boulevard back here last year we tried to tried it.

B

So you get these people to come down here, so it could bring most most of cruisers and along in this area, but we realized that a lot of these folks have been doing this for years. That's.

A

Good they want to go. This is.

B

Their spot they like it, so we don't want. We don't want to cause a problem, so there'd be plenty of parking back here. There's going to be plenty of lots along here to park in now, when the crews will start coming in, everybody wants to park right in front of City Hall and there's just no way that we can do that now, some people may get their feelings hurt somebody end up further away than they want to be, but there's no way.

B

Please understand, there's no way for us to park that many vehicles and and everybody get at the same spot. Okay,.

A

Closing thoughts, patients drive defensively, don't drink and drive what else? Don't.

B

Be stunning don't get out there, don't let don't let spectators add y'all on to stunts every year. Just about it. We there's a vehicle that loses control and it's always because they're stunting spinning their tires. John.

A

Thank you very much and good luck this week. Thank you very much. Don't forget the cones go out Wednesday at 11 o'clock and they will be in place for the duration of the event.