A thank you to carriers for their cooperative efforts during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games has been extended in an open letter by Joseph M Clapp, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) administrator.
"Your direct efforts behind the scenes contributed to these successes, and I extend my gratitude and appreciation," Clapp wrote in the letter. "In the months leading up to the Games, the Utah Trucking Association and the Salt Lake Organizing Committee held several widely attended outreach sessions in and around Salt Lake City to advise motor carriers where and when to expect increased volumes of Olympic-related traffic. During these sessions, our FMCSA Utah Division Office and its partners at the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) and the Utah Highway Patrol asked you to help by voluntarily avoiding the high-traffic corridors, scheduling delivery times around events, and routing thru-traffic around Salt Lake City.
"The post-Games assessment of the region's transportation system proved you understood the importance of these requests and took positive action." The UDOT reports indicated that its Ports of Entry in Northern Utah experienced significantly lower than average truck and bus traffic during the Games, while its Southern Ports of Entry saw an increase during that same period. This indicated that commercial vehicle traffic was routed around Salt Lake City.
"While these actions, making traffic flow smoothly, may not have been readily apparent to spectators and athletes, your actions have not gone unnoticed," Clapp wrote. "These contributions culminated in moving tens of thousands of people without a single significant Olympic-related truck or bus crash during the 21-day period of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games."