October 29, 2013 Calgary flood 2013 – Resilience of City’s workforce supports Continuation of operations Ron Schafer, Transportation Planning Sandy Virgo, Tomorrows Workplace

October 29, 2013 OVERVIEW 1)The flood 2)The fallout 3)Travel options 4)The recovery 5)Lessons Learned 6)Mobilizing City employees to continue operations

October 29, 2013 The FLOOD The Elbow river inflow peaked at 1,240 m 3 /second, 12x the regular rate and more than 3x the 2005 flood

October 29, 2013 The FLOOD The Bow river flows peaked at 2400 m 3 /second, 8x the regular flow and more than 3x the 2005 flood

October 29, 2013 The FLOOD Niagara Falls average flow 1834 m 3 /second, peak flow 2800 m 3 /second Wikipedia

October 29, 2013 The FALLOUT 2)S hut down parts of Calgary for at least a week 3)Up to 10 weeks for buildings with flood damage 4)E vacuations in 32 communities affected 110,000 Calgarian’s 5)Roads and bridges damaged 6)Parking inventory reduced 1)5.1 million hours of work lost in Alberta 300,000 Albertans lost 7.5 million hours 134,000 people put in 2.4 million additional hours Net loss in all industries except utilities and public administration

October 29, 2013 The FALLOUT More than 20 bridges were closed

October 29, 2013 The FALLOUT 16 LRT stations were closed More than 50 bus routes were cancelled or detoured

October 29, 2013 Travel Options Temporary Park & Bike sites Carpooling Temporary Transit Lanes Communications Key Messages News Conferences Social Media

October 29, 2013 Travel Options Temporary park and bike sites Established sites by asking private businesses and city facility managers if they were willing to allocate space. Sites were chosen near the core to allow travellers to park their vehicles and finish their trip by bike, transit or carpool. Temporary signage was installed and maps were created, posted online and distributed to the public. TP staff monitored the usage of the sites in the days following their implementation.

October 29, 2013 South LRT – Established temporary transit lanes on Macleod Trail parallel to the disabled LRT line Travel Options

October 29, 2013 Carpooling Posted banners on to encourage carpoolingwww.carpool.ca increased social media – between June 20 and July 8 – reached 24,872 Mayor Nenshi ‘s twitter feed encouraged carpooling, transit and cycling Result: Calgary’s carpool database received 1135 visits in June 2013 compared to 447 in June 2012 Registrations were up 77% in June 2013 from the year previous Most activity between June 22 to June 29 peaked on the Tuesday Jun 25 Travel Options

October 29, 2013 Communications Frequent news conferences Mayor Nenshi encouraged transit, carpooling and cycling... Key Messages  “do not travel downtown unless you are part of the recovery”  “parking and routes are compromised “  “please do not drive downtown”  “take transit, cycle or carpool” Travel Options

October 29, metres of track were replaced in one week to re-open the south line of the LRT. The RECOVERY

October 29, lane metres of Macleod Trail were rebuilt in 1.5 days The RECOVERY

October 29, 2013 The RECOVERY 1000 lane kilometres of road swept downtown in 24 hours

October 29, % of road network in affected areas restored in the first seven days The RECOVERY

October 29, 2013 Lessons Learned  temporary options developed and put into place  Initial promotion was low key waiting for downtown to be open  messages encouraged downtown commuters and their employers to stay out of the downtown where possible  Transportation network back on line in record time  Macleod trail and the adjacent South LRT line open in time for the Calgary Stampede on July 4 th less than 12 days after the flooding.  Mitigation measures, while ready, were not needed, majority of the transportation system to downtown was accessible within two weeks (except for some parking)  The Exception

October 29, 2013 Mobilizing City Employees to Continue Operations The Flood How we mobilized the workforce