How would I arrange, and approximately how much would it cost (if anything) to legally block off a street for about a mile and block all intersections in a busy suburb residential & business area?
This would occur during the day, could be a weekend or weekday just for fun or maybe for a homemade Stunt video?
There is this wicked-cool (my daily trendy adjective) street near my work that looks like something from San Francisco cop shows.
I have a dream of speeding through this at top (yet controllable) speed, and ignoring all stop signs and signal lights. I think I could catch air, and certainly have a blast of a lifetime doing so.
Relax all you civil service dopers, I am a very responsible person would never intentionally but anyone in harms way.
So… anyone worked on movie sets, or similar situations where they contacted the city, hired police or security guards etc? Who do you have to pay besides the staff to place barricades, hold back foot traffic etc?
The idea might be, if I were to arrange a few of my friends to chip in we could have a few timed races set up. Is this even slightly possible without Bill Gate’s checkbook?
A couple summers ago, we had our block roped off for a 4th-of-July block party. But we had to get the consent of everyone on the block. And no one drove there at all. And it was just one block. So maybe there’s a larger-scale version of that type of thing?
It will depend on the city, but calling your city’s film office/special events will get you the information for your area.
I suspect it will be something to the effect of: really freakin’ expensive and probably not for anything that’s not at least a TV commercial. To be sure, there are plenty of nonprofit events that probably have to pay nothing or very little, but you need permits at the very least.
I highly doubt they will close off the street for you to have a joy ride, no matter what you offer to pay.
The City of Toronto Film And Television Office, who’ve been known to block off eight-lane University Avenue for a Schwarzenegger film shoot. (Next week there’s a movie coming out in which they blow up City Hall. But I digress…)
There aren’t a lot of actual prices mentioned, but the variety of things that have to be done for blocking off a street (in this case, for a movie shoot, but I suppose it would be the same for a race) are surprisingly high:[ul][li]Notify all affected businesses and homeowners along the street. []Arrange substitute parking for those with parking permits on the affected street.[]Get insurance to protect the businesses and homeowners along the street.[]Hire off-duty police officers to direct traffic and block/unblock the road.[]Hire works crew to set up and remove barricades.[]Rent and install portapotties, etc, for the crowds (if any). []Compensate the transit authority for rerouting vehicles or moving stops.Clean up the site at the end.[/ul]And I’m sure there are all kinds of other costs and out-of-pocket expenses. [/li]
While digging around in the site, I found this interesting tidbit: