Syracuse University is collaborating with the city of Syracuse to provide a park-and-ride transit system, with the hopes of giving NCAA Tournament East Regional attendees an experience of not only the campus, but also the local area.

The Department of Public Safety is working with Parking and Transit Services, the Syracuse Police Department and the city of Syracuse in arranging a park-and-ride transit system which will run from Armory Square and Destiny USA to SU, said DPS Day Patrol Operations and Events Commander Vern Thompson.

“We’ve collaborated with everyone here at SU and the city of Syracuse to approach this as a team,” Thompson said. “We’re looking forward to the tournament bringing in viewers from across the country and this system will hopefully give them a feel for the city.”

There will also be additional busses running from Skytop, said Scot Vanderpool, an SU Parking Services manager, in an email. However, he said the transit service from Destiny USA and Armory Square will help reduce the number of attendees that may need to park at Skytop.

Vanderpool said there is a contingency parking and traffic plan in place, but they do not anticipate any serious problems.

“There’s always some congestion, but we believe that there will be fans coming in at various times for this event, not all at once, which will help,” Vanderpool said.

Parking Services has set up a command center and will be in touch with SPD, who will be able to redirect traffic to relieve congestion, he added.

Syracuse Police Department Sgt. Gary Bulinski said SPD isn’t expecting any traffic problems.

“I expect it to be a flawless event and hopefully everyone will have a safe, enjoyable time,” he said.

When the Carrier Dome hosted a Billy Joel concert last weekend, traffic was an issue, but Bulinski said SPD isn’t changing its procedures.

Bulinski said the Billy Joel concert was “the one time in the past 20 years that I’m aware of that (the Manley and Skytop lots) have filled up and we’ve actually ran into a traffic back-up as a result of that.” He added that every other event, including Monster Jam, which hosts more than 40,000 people, hasn’t had any traffic or parking problems.

DPS Associate Chief John Sardino said it’s normal to deal with crowds of this magnitude, but the tournament will bring bigger pockets of traffic coming from hotels and across the city taking the same routes to SU. He said the additional buses from Armory and Destiny will drop riders off at University Place, near Watson Hall, rather than College Place to reduce on-campus traffic.

There will be heavy pedestrian and vehicle traffic around campus, especially Friday night, when the two scheduled games will bring a long period of heavy traffic, he said.

Sardino said DPS will have a few additional officers available around the Dome to answer questions and assist with directions for campus, and parking and busing locations. He added that it will be important for regional attendees to leave plenty of time to get to the Dome and get settled in as they will have to navigate “a coming and going crowd of 26,000-27,000 people.”

-Asst. news editor Justin Mattingly contributed reporting to this article.

Published on March 26, 2015 at 10:23 pm

Contact Lydia: lawilson@syr.edu