John Bombatch
Local racing
After hearing all the stories about friends and work colleagues who spent a good bit of their time at Kentucky Speedway stuck in a 20-mile line of traffic, I felt I just had to weigh in on the nightmarish debut of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing in Sparta, Ky.
But I’m not going to pile on and say it’s a horrible thing that will never change. It will just take some time.
Bob Pockrass of scenedaily.com wrote a great article about how Kentucky Speedway is going through the same growing pains that befell current Sprint Cup hosts Texas Motor Speedway and Michigan International Speedway when they first held NASCAR events.
The article gives hope for a better fan experience in the not-so-distant future, and I agree.
Friends told me they’d finally given up after being mired in more than four hours of stopped traffic.
Others told me that once they did finally arrive at the track, not a parking attendant could be found the entire time they were there. It’s these problems that can — and eventually will — be fixed.
To my knowledge, there were no satellite parking lots made available for fans to use for the race weekend.
With several parking lots available at the mall in nearby Florence, Ky., a shuttle service could lessen the traffic snarl a bit with frequent runs to and from the track.
It’s quite possible that the traffic attendants were stuck in the same traffic they’d been hired to direct. Get those employees into the facility early, set up makeshift tents or find housing for them at a college campus perhaps, but make sure that they’re there to do their jobs.
One photo I saw in NASCAR Illustrated shows cars parked in jumbled rows, with open gaps roughly 3 to 4 car lengths across where no cars could reach.
You go to a race at Michigan and there’s a steady line of neon-tressed parking attendants on hand to lead you to where you need to park. And they park you in tight rows that seemingly stretch for miles. But the bottom line is, there’s little if any traffic jams and drivers aren’t left to fend for themselves.
And the same goes for after the race, too. Coordination from law enforcement and the parking attendants would help create a smooth exit strategy from Kentucky Speedway as well.
I’ve been to some races there where it’s taken at least a couple hours just to move in the parking lot after the event. That should never be the case.
The dailyscene article says MIS tracks the zip codes of its advance ticket buyers in order to gauge from which direction most of its traffic will flow.
While Interstate 71 is the main thoroughfare both north and south to the track, maybe more creative use of Route 35 (Jerry Carroll Blvd., east of the track) and Route 1039 (west of the track) could help alleviate some of the traffic jumble on I-71?
While there may have been plenty of growing and too many pains this time around, parking will get better at Kentucky Speedway. Some day.
Got a racing story to tell? Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2851 or jbombatch@coxohio.com.