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Re: Sioux Falls Event Center
I hope you mean Russell, because Louise is a mile and a quarter west of the Arena, and dead-ends at the fairgrounds.
And as a side point, if you're going to extol the virtues of traffic management at one location vs. another, shouldn't you at least be familiar enough with both to get the names right?
But, to this notion of traffic: With a pair of minor exceptions (two driveways onto Madison and one onto E. bound Russell), all the convention center traffic is dumped onto Western and West. In an event where this parking lot is full (which would be the case before the additional acres of asphalt that will be made available when the city gets rid of that pesky greenspace at McCart), you will have about 3,000 vehicles trying to exit onto two roads.
To give you some small idea of what this volume means:
About 42,000 vehicles per day (24/7) travel through the Louise/41st intersection.
An event that fills the EC will put the same volume of cars onto West & Western as pass through the Louise/41st intersection in an hour and 45 minutes (on average). (an intersection that is 9 lanes wide on one side, 8 lanes wide on another, and 6 lanes wide on the other two.)
Make no mistake, the Arena site will *not* empty quickly after an event. Period. You can take that to the bank. The distributed parking downtown will undoubtedly mean a longer walk for some people, but it also means that exiting downtown will be much simpler. It doesn't take long to empty downtown.
You are correct, there will need to be infrastructure improvements between the river & Cliff, but those infrastructure improvements will benefit the businesses and homes in that area, where the only facility that stands to benefit from improvements at the Arena site is the Arena itself.
Originally posted by jackrabit1
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And as a side point, if you're going to extol the virtues of traffic management at one location vs. another, shouldn't you at least be familiar enough with both to get the names right?
But, to this notion of traffic: With a pair of minor exceptions (two driveways onto Madison and one onto E. bound Russell), all the convention center traffic is dumped onto Western and West. In an event where this parking lot is full (which would be the case before the additional acres of asphalt that will be made available when the city gets rid of that pesky greenspace at McCart), you will have about 3,000 vehicles trying to exit onto two roads.
To give you some small idea of what this volume means:
About 42,000 vehicles per day (24/7) travel through the Louise/41st intersection.
An event that fills the EC will put the same volume of cars onto West & Western as pass through the Louise/41st intersection in an hour and 45 minutes (on average). (an intersection that is 9 lanes wide on one side, 8 lanes wide on another, and 6 lanes wide on the other two.)
Make no mistake, the Arena site will *not* empty quickly after an event. Period. You can take that to the bank. The distributed parking downtown will undoubtedly mean a longer walk for some people, but it also means that exiting downtown will be much simpler. It doesn't take long to empty downtown.
You are correct, there will need to be infrastructure improvements between the river & Cliff, but those infrastructure improvements will benefit the businesses and homes in that area, where the only facility that stands to benefit from improvements at the Arena site is the Arena itself.
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