Planning underway for Super Bowl transportation

ATLANTA - With less than six months to go until Super Bowl LIII takes over Atlanta, organizers, and transportation experts have already begun the complex process of creating a comprehensive plan to keep the city moving.

"Transportation, there's a lot of cogs to the machine and we need to make sure that all the cogs are running smoothly," explained Rob Ross, with Kimley-Horn, a consulting firm working with the Super Bowl Host Committee.

The plan is being developed with input from 40 separate agencies, including the Atlanta Police Department, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and MARTA.

"Our biggest role is serving as a coordinator and connecting all those different entities," said Kimley-Horn Traffic Engineer Liz Johnson.  "We can't do it alone."

The details of the plan are still being worked out, but alternative transportation will play a big part.

"We want everybody to consider using MARTA.  Find a friend and carpool to work.  Anything we can do to alleviate the existing Atlanta congestion that everybody knows about would be very helpful," said Ross.

According to the host committee, one of their biggest priorities while planning for the Super Bowl and the 10 days leading up to the game is to make sure Atlantans can travel where they need to go. 

"We want to make sure that our visitors have a positive experience, but we want to also make sure that our residents and our locals that work and play and live here have a positive experience as well," said Amy Patterson, the vice president of operations and logistics for the host committee.

Organizers plan to release more specific details of the transportation plan later this year. 

"The key to the 1996 Olympics was communication," said Patterson.  "That will be our goal as we move into the fall and early part of 2019 is to over communicate what's happening around the Super Bowl."