re: Clemson tailgating

I parked at Snow Outdoor fitness last week and it was the absolute worst parking I ever experienced at Clemson. Sat in line trying to get out for an hour and half.

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It's bad, and they have no incentive to make it better.

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If only Clemson had the foresight to build their stadium in an abandoned warehouse district, surrounded by slums, chainlink fences, and gas stations in the absolute worst part of town, traffic would be so much easier to deal with.

No one would do that, though.

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Columbia’s traffic during games sucks too

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I’ve yet to get trapped in a parking lot for two hours when leaving a game in Columbia

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Traffic has never been an issue for me at Clemson games...arrive early and tailgate and leave late after postgame tailgate. Problem solved

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It's not a problem if you have a noon kickoff. But if it's a night game, it's all kind of suck.

No wonder they didn't sellout any home games in 2018

Think about it, you have your best team ever and can't management a single sellout.

I've been to professional and college sporting events (along with concerts and shows) all over the country. The way the venue does post event traffic speaks volumes to there level of concern for fans (and if I'd ever go there again.) Bottom line, Clemson is about the worst situation of anywhere I've seen. It's not totally their fault, but there are things that one can do to mitigate it and they haven't done it.

One of my biggest complaints is if your a visiting fan and get stuck in the wrong lot, they might force you east when you need to go west. You then have no way to detour back a road that will take you where you need to go.

Clemson fans know where to go to avoid this. other fan bases dont.

It's an on-campus stadium that holds 80,000+ at a school that enrolls 20,000, in a town of less than 20,000. That's a lot of moving parts.
I know UofSC fans aren't familiar with a real college campus, but that's how it is. You're willing to deal with it or you're not. It's just always been a part of the experience. Everyone is in the same boat, and you're not worried about getting shot, robbed, or accosted for money like some stadiums.

Look I get and understand the challenges. That big Lake to your west handicaps the school in where they can build infrastructure and expand.

But highways can be expanded, but at a capital and political price. The powers that be aren't willing to make a change because of those costs.

And the fans pay the consequences.

Lonnie you are right about the difference in traffic during day and night games. Night games are the worst with traffic. Other than Clemson, I’ve only been to UGA and South Carolina for games. UGA wasn’t bad getting out (I think I parked near the DQ) and S.C. wasn’t bad when I parked on Shop Rd in a fenced in old warehouse.

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And the fans pay the consequences.

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Let me help you out with this conundrum:
You hate Clemson.
You hate Taters.
You hate sheep.
You hate traffic.

Stay in Utah, and you won't have to worry about the taters sitting in Clemson traffic on their way home to see their sheep.
There's a simple solution to everything.

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Let me help you out with this conundrum:
You hate Clemson.
You hate Taters.
You hate sheep.
You hate traffic.

Stay in Utah, and you won't have to worry about the taters sitting in Clemson traffic on their way home to see their sheep.
There's a simple solution to everything.

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My feelings for Clemson aside, part of running a good program and/or being a fan of a particular institution is being able to admit deficiencies. That's the only way you are going to improve those things. If you say there isn't traffic and congestion problems on gameday in Clemson, you aren't being honest with yourself and others.

Are the negative things people have said about traveling to Clemson to see a football game untrue? Are they lying when they say it can take house to get out of the parking lots? Are they lying when they say visitors have to walk along way to the stadium? Are they lying when they say all of the roads out can really be jammed up leaving town? I'll leave if up to you to objectively answer those questions.

Look there are lots of great things about Saturdays in Clemson. It's widely regarded as one of the best gameday experiences in College Football. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. My point is and has been that there are solutions to some of these problems, and they have not been implemented. I never said that there were EASY solutions. I simply said that there isn't the political will to changes things because of the repercussions of those decisions. And I'm not sure that there really needs to be for 6 weekends out of the year.

I was fortunate enough to be here in 2002 when the Olympics came to town and was able to attend some of the events. More than 1.5 million tickets were sold over the two weeks of the event and there were upwards of 70,000 spectators at the various venues each day of the game. And this is not to mention the free festivities that happened throughout the area. On top of this, it all happened during the height of ski season so there was all the traffic to the ski areas as well.

In this case the Olympic Organizing committee pulled out all the stops. They used every mode of transportation you can think off. They totally rebuilt the interstate highway system, they put in light rail and massively increased public transportation (busses). It was expensive, and very inconvenient to those of us that lived here at the time (so much so that some people (mainly those that lost property) still have some underlying animosity about it), but the benefits have remained in the almost 20 years since the event. On an interesting side note, they held the opening and closing ceremonies at the University of Utah's football stadium and extended a light rail line to the stadium. Those attending Ute games regularly ride the train both to and from the games. There were many, many venues that shuttled people from offsite or distance parking areas to the venues because there was no or limited parking at the venues. As a result they were able to quickly move people out after an event was over. It worked very well. Many of these areas were up two lane mountain roads that were the only way in or out.

The point is here, there are alternative solutions even in a small town like Clemson that doesn't include infrastructure. Park City (pop 7,500) with only two roads in and out (one 2 lane, one 4 lane), moved those going to the olympic events, along with thousands of skiers and sightseers into and out of the town every day. I already mentioned Darlington on Race weekends. There are lots of other examples good and bad.

I'm sure those in charge of planning traffic and infrastructure are trying to improve things. All I'm saying is given the problems that even clemson Fans say they have, there have to be other solutions out there that have yet to be explored. For example, I used to live in Charlotte and attended many, many events at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Back then, they let all of the VIPs park close to the racetrack and I have no problem with this. My issue with it was, they also let those folks leave first, blocking all of us ordinary folks in the other lots until they were empty. All that did was create massive gridlock in the outlying parking lots. And there was often empty space on the highways waiting for those cars to move out first. It doesn't take a computer modeler to tell you there are more efficient ways to move traffic out of the event. But hey, it's economics so I get it.

As I said in the beginning, the first part of improvement is recognizing the problem and not accepting it as the status quo. That's all I'm asking the Clemson fans to do here. You guys know better than anyone where the improvements could/should be made.

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No one is reading that,

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Translation: You're either lazy or illiterate.