Hamburg resident James N. Schmigel Jr. vows never to attend another concert at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center, after sitting through a traffic mess that saw him move less than a mile in an hour and 15 minutes Saturday evening.
A Buffalo News music critic called the traffic bottleneck a disaster.
And one of the passengers caught in that traffic jam, a 23-year-old Rochester woman, was struck and critically injured after she left the vehicle she was riding in on the way to Darien Lake.
Plenty of people still were howling Monday about the traffic delays into the Jason Aldean concert, and they were wondering whether a new Darien Lake policy banning pedestrian traffic into the venue hurt, rather than helped.
But Darien Lake officials replied that a sellout crowd of 21,800 concertgoers always creates traffic delays; that the parking lots were able to accommodate all the vehicles on a busy day; and that the parking lots were cleared earlier than usual after a sold-out concert.
“There were definitely delays getting in,” acknowledged Steve Hallowell, director of marketing and sales at Darien Lake. “Any time there’s a sellout here, there’s a lot of traffic. But in general, the parking worked fine. And we were able to push out the cars in a more efficient manner.”
Still, Darien Lake officials were well aware of the frustrations among concertgoers experiencing traffic gridlock.
“We think we can get better,” Hallowell said. “We’ve been meeting since the concert to find ways we can improve the inflow and outflow.”
Park officials also may want to address what concertgoers described as a vulgar scene along the traffic gridlock, with some people leaving their vehicles, appearing quite intoxicated and urinating in plain view.
There also may not be anything park officials can do to change the mind of Schmigel, a 50-year-old country-music fan who headed to the concert with his wife, Paula.
“That was such a frustrating experience,” Schmigel said Monday. “It was just a nightmare.”
The Schmigels left Hamburg at 5:30 p.m. for a 7:30 p.m. concert. At 6:15 p.m., Schmigel said he was amazed to hit the traffic deadlock on Route 77, one mile south of Route 20. Seventy-five minutes later, the couple still hadn’t hit Route 20 and remained two miles from the park entrance, they estimated. So at 7:45 p.m., they headed home.
Schmigel said that many frustrated concertgoers opened their coolers and started tailgating on Route 77, creating what he called a very dangerous and ugly situation.
“You had this mass logjam of people who started partying in their cars,” he said. “Basically, the [tailgate] party moved from the parking lot to the road.”
The new Darien Lake parking policy, which went into effect before the Def Leppard show Aug. 17, requires all concertgoers to park in the amusement park’s lot, banning pedestrian traffic on roads leading into the facility. So the policy prevents drivers from parking in several paid satellite lots nearby and then walking to the concert.
The question is whether that two-week-old policy had any effect on the traffic problems that still had concertgoers grumbling Monday. With the satellite lots closed, the vehicles that previously would have parked there now were in the line of stalled traffic.
“I know why they did it, but in their attempt to stop the drinking and drunken people on the road, they made it worse,” Schmigel said.
Darien Lake officials disagreed. “I think previous sellouts this year had similar traffic issues,” Hallowell said.
Law enforcement officials say the new policy makes sense, taking would-be pedestrians, many of them having had too much to drink, out of harm’s way in the line of traffic.
As is the case with Bills games or large concerts at Ralph Wilson Stadium, the combination of pedestrians, heavy traffic and alcohol can be a dangerous mix, police said.
“Based on what we’ve seen – it’s only been a couple of weeks – I believe the new policy helps police manage traffic better, without [drivers] having to worry about pedestrians,” said State Police Sgt. David Martek, traffic supervisor for Troop A. “The policy allows us to control the ingress and egress out of Darien Lake. If there’s an issue with the new traffic pattern, it’s got to do with the drivers getting used to the new system – no satellite parking and no pedestrians on the road.”
The new policy is designed to curb underage drinking, as the park continues to conduct random vehicle searches for minors with alcohol.
“We want to get the message out that this is no longer a place for underage drinking,” Hallowell said.
The new plan also has created a safer, more orderly procession of pedestrians once they’ve driven into the park, he added.
Oddly enough, the serious accident that occurred Saturday night, two weeks into the new policy, can be used as an argument for having such a policy – to take more pedestrians off the road.
State police say that Jessica Freeman, 23, of Rochester, was struck by a motorcycle on Route 77 at about 8 p.m. She had left a stalled northbound vehicle, and as she returned to it, she was struck by a southbound motorcycle. The motorcycle operator has not been charged.
Freeman, who suffered head and facial injuries, was taken by Mercy Flight to Erie County Medical Center, where she remained in critical condition Monday.
“We are looking at the fact that there was alcohol in the vehicle,” one police official said of the continuing investigation.
Officials said several factors combined to create the traffic jam Saturday night:
• A sell-out crowd.
• A late-arriving crowd. For some reason, maybe a gorgeous 90-degree day that had concertgoers delaying their departure, only a trickle of fans came early.
“It seemed like everyone came at once,” Martek said. “If 22,000 people are trying to get to a concert in a three-hour span, you’re trying to funnel too much traffic into a little space. It’s going to create a backlog. It’s the nature of the beast.”
• The unpredictability of traffic patterns, from one event to the next.
Again, for no obvious reason, the traffic backup was much more serious going north on Route 77, a two-lane road, rather than southbound on 77, from the New York Thruway, authorities said.
“There’s nothing to explain it,” Martek said. “It’s an anomaly.”
While some critics might not want to hear it, park officials cited one surefire suggestion for reducing the parking woes.
“We really do encourage guests to come early,” Hallowell said, “especially when sellouts occur.”
email: gwarner@buffnews.com