GULF SHORES – With the fourth Hangout Music and Arts Festival in the rearview mirror city leaders in Gulf Shores are evaluating how the changes implemented at the latest event worked.

From initial reports – officials say they will more know more in coming weeks – the changes worked well and made the festival better.

“From my perspective and others, too, it was a very successful event and one we can be very proud of,” Director of Recreation and Cultural Affairs Grant Brown told the City Council on May 20.

Director of Public Works Mark Acreman echoed those sentiments.

“There are some things we could still tweak, but overall excellent job all around with everybody involved,” Acreman said.

One of the biggest changes was flowing traffic one way on streets north of the beach highway to increase both traffic flow and safety of pedestrians.

“Mark and the public works guys, the traffic rerouting over on the east side seemed to work very well to keep pedestrians and vehicles on the one-way onlys,” Brown said.

At first, Brown said, he had reservations but with a few quick fixes the plan worked just fine.

“As we drove through it on Thursday afternoon I personally was getting a little uneasy not knowing how it would work with people not having seen that before and the temporary signage versus permanent signage,” Brown said. “But as we added some barricades and saw people beginning to work their way through it, it really became a positive. It was much safer and easier access on the east side of Alabama 59.”

Access to the west was a little more complicated, but there are less options for roads in that area of town.

“The west side Is still a little bit tight as you move west on West First Avenue, which is really the only bypass other than Windmill Ridge,” Brown said.

There was a big change in the way medical services were made available to festivalgoers, one that was also well received.

“We had the hospital involved,” Assistant Fire Chief Keith Martin said. “They actually had the medical tent. It was actually an ER extension or MASH unit type deal.

“Some of the patients could be treated there. If they weren’t able to take care of them there they would get them up to the next level which would be their walk-in. If the walk-in couldn’t take them then they went to the emergency room.”

Martin said the number of patients seen by staff was nearly double from previous years, but the number of patients transported dwindled to single digits.

“We had a total of 867 patients, but out of that only nine people were transported,” Martin said. “In 2011 we had 440 patients and 37 of those were transported. In 2012 we 467 patients and 24 transported.”

The reason, Martin said, was the hospital’s involvement and more volunteers who were in training on hand to help.

“We had the paramedic students, we had the nursing students involved with us,” he said. “So we really expanded the volunteer base this year and that’s how the system works.”

The overall interworking between city departments and the main police-fire compound also contributed to a smooth festival, Brown said.

“It was really cool how our police and fire compound worked as a command center,” Brown said. “We had the ability to instantly get the IT, revenue, police, fire and Brandan (Franklin) with emergency management and that was a great concept.

“We actually did some photos of the different places that the city put our assets and so we’re able to take this model and internally use it for training and be able to help other agencies work at the same model.”

Baldwin County EMA Director Mitchell Sims was on hand to observe the operations and brought others from around the county with him to watch and learn, the city’s EMA Director Brandan Franklin said.

The financial assessment of the festival is weeks away, but positive reports are expected there as well, Brown said.

“We won’t have any real idea on economic impact or anything else until we get a little further down the road,” Brown said. “We’ll get all the accounting down and produce all the invoices to the festival which reimburses for all the city services and everything we put into the event outside of the normal day-to-day operations of the city.”

For Acreman, he was still working on the festival on Monday monitoring how the traffic out of town was flowing.

“I think the mass exodus went as well as its ever gone,” he said. “I drove out at 11:30, near check out time and I went from east beach to the foot of the bridge in about 20 minutes. I did the same route from west beach and it didn’t start slowing down until West Second Street. Once you got to 59 and were able to make that northbound turn, you’re looking at a 10- to 15-minute drive to go two or three miles.”

Traffic lights on Alabama 59 were set to stay green for four minutes on Monday morning as the crowd streamed out. Police officers were also at every intersection in case problems developed.

“It was great participation and coordination with the police department as well for that,” Acreman said. “They would be able to get out and direct traffic manually. I was glad to see it was not needed.

“There are some things we could still tweak, but overall excellent job all around with everybody involved.”