Maryland Renaissance Festival (Renn Fest) - Routing & Traffic Management
A heads up for our local editors and a potential Case Study for others
MD Renn Fest attracts hundreds of thousands of attendees each fall, plus over a thousand participants (actors, vendors, etc) each day it is open. The traffic impacts to the small undeveloped community surrounding the Renn Fest property is significant, especially on sold-out weekends. In cooperation with Renn Fest and the local DPW and Police, Waze volunteers have implemented routing controls on nearby impacted local roads that have Local Only traffic restrictions, with resident passes and police enforcement.
To ensure local routing, only when enforcement is enacted, Waze volunteers have added “private installation” gates to Honeysuckle Lane between Generals Hwy (MD-178) and Crownsville Rd. The gate setup has the standard two-way local Street segment of Honeysuckle Lane supplemented with one-way “IN” gate segments typed as Private Road. During normal routing, the Private Road segments are ignored/avoided, and all traffic flows through Honeysuckle Lane. During “LOCAL ONLY” routing, the standard Street segments of Honeysuckle Lane are closed in the “IN” direction, forcing routes to overcome the Private Road penalty to travel Honeysuckle Lane.
If you have any questions or concerns about the MD Renn Fest routing situation, please let us know in #Maryland on MAR discord or below.