By Joshua Qualls

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The university has been preparing for the Thursday night football game against Auburn for over a year, but many commuters are concerned about the flow of traffic through Lexington on Thursday.

UK has developed a comprehensive parking plan for students, faculty and staff, but UK’s power is limited in alleviating traffic conditions off-campus.

As a result, the Lexington Police Department and Lextran have both developed plans to help the university community and other commuters get from point A to point B on game day.

LPD spokeswoman Anne Welch said LPD is expecting a convergence of daily commuter traffic with the elevated amount of traffic the city normally experiences from football games held on Saturday nights.

“Even if it’s just average attendance for the UK game, it is definitely going to bring more traffic into the area — especially during those rush hours,” Welch said. “What we are really hoping to do is get our normal commuters … to plan around the game day traffic that we are expecting to be coming in.”

LPD is asking commuters to plan alternate routes and avoid the campus area if they can. It will also release real-time traffic updates on Twitter to inform those who must travel through the area about what to expect.

“Hopefully we will be able to assist our motorists and especially our commuters getting in and out with some alternate routes and some things to do should that become necessary on game day,” Welch said.

Whereas Nicholasville Road typically has three outbound lanes open during rush hour, the road will have two lanes open on both sides to help increase flow through the city.

Jill Barnett, Lextran’s director of community affairs, said the police are usually very good at communicating with Lextran about signal and access control throughout the city, as well as the areas where high traffic volume is expected.

She said Lextran is accustomed to the traffic conditions during Saturday football games, but it will be a challenge, especially for bus routes, because it will mix with commuters from the campus community, the hospitals and other places around town.

“We’ve been working to get information in an effort to serve our passengers as best we can,” Barnett said.

Lextran will begin detouring some of its routes at 3 p.m. in an effort to avoid delays or traffic jams near Commonwealth Stadium, and it will use social media to communicate information about delays on any affected bus route or if any stop needs to be relocated.

“Any time there is a football game or a special event that creates increased traffic of this level, we encourage passengers to expect delays,” Barnett said. “Unfortunately we’re just like a car in that we get stuck in traffic just like (drivers) do.”