Arlington, Texas -- the site of sheer madness and utter chaos

[jgb191]

I feared this worst case scenario for the city of Arlington, which has now become reality.

Imagine this if you will....this Sunday October 31, 2010. Six Flags Over Texas operating that day, the Dallas Cowboys hosting their game (vs Jacksonville) at Jerry's World, the Arlington Mall will be packed as well (Halloween Night), and to top it all off, The Rangers hosting Game 4 of the World Series. All these places are clustered within a square mile.


(NOTE: the Rangers ballpark is located at the Linear Park between Six Flags and Jerry's World)

Add it all up and you can imagine what traffic is going to look like throughout that day....and did I mention I-30 (which all these venues are alongside) is still under major road construction? Not going to be a pretty picture. And then on Super Bowl Sunday this February, the Cowboys Stadium is hosting the game along Six Flags operating that day as well. I mean something's got to give here.

God forbid the Mavericks (NBA) and the Stars (NHL) teams decide to move from Dallas to Arlington as well.

And mind you, Arlington is no small town by any means with nearly 400,000 residents and still growing rapidly. It's the 7th (seventh) most populated city in the state of Texas and the 48th largest city in the US, which puts it ahead of cities like Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Minneapolis, and trailing right behind Cleveland.

[mgk920]

I wouldn't worry all too much about traffic for the Cowboys' game, though, with the way that they've been stinking up the place lately....

(*DUCKS* and RUNS!!!!)





Mike

[mightyace]

To be fair, how many people actually thought that the Rangers would be in the World Series?

[Stephane Dumas]

To be fair, how many people actually thought that the Rangers would be in the World Series?

No one, the Rangers have currently the underdog/Cinderella team image.

On a slightly off-topic note, why the Rangers are named the Texas Rangers and not the Dallas Rangers? 

[agentsteel53]

On a slightly off-topic note, why the Rangers are named the Texas Rangers and not the Dallas Rangers? 

their home ballpark is in Arlington, which is actually a bit closer to Fort Worth than Dallas.  They represent the entire DFW metropolitan area.

the Texas Rangers name (aside from being less unwieldy than "Dallas-Fort Worth Rangers") comes from the law enforcement unit, which is well-known in Texas history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Ranger_Division

[bogdown]

this happened a couple weeks ago when the Boys were playing the Titans...

[Zmapper]

This is why you don't build a city of 300,000 with no mass transit. 

[jgb191]

If only the Dallas area mass transit could reach that far.

[rte66man]

Are there any plans to extend the DART light rail to Arlington?  I would have thought they could have done it as a part of the I30 rebuild.

[corco]

This is why you don't build a city of 300,000 with no mass transit. 

Yeah. I'm not a huge mass transit fan, but I think for things like sporting events it should be all but required. If nothing else, it's a safety issue. Imagine if some sort of disaster would have struck that general area. The sheer clusterfuck of trying to get everybody to their cars and out would have completely screwed everybody over.

Proven fact in evacuation theory: You can get a lot more people out much faster by stationing buses around a stadium and basically prohibiting automobile traffic than you can by having them run to their cars and drive away

[mightyace]

Proven fact in evacuation theory: You can get a lot more people out much faster by stationing buses around a stadium and basically prohibiting automobile traffic than you can by having them run to their cars and drive away

But, it still can take a long time.  After the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona on July 3rd, the track had a fleet of buses going between just one of the remote parking areas (probably about 30-50,000 people).  My brother and I waited well over an hour for a bus.  In an evacuation scenario, you would need even more buses as they would, most likely, have longer times to cycle between the venue and the evacuation site.

Or, basically, if you have a terrorist scenario like the nuke in "Sum of All Fears," most of the people at the event are helpless to escape the device/action of the bad guys.  And, yes, a nuke is an unlikely scenario in real life, but the point is, no matter what you do, it takes awhile to get people away from a sporting event.

[mgk920]

Interesting in that the Romans designed their Colosseum (the big one in modern-day Rome) such that EVERYONE of its several tens of thousands of capacity in the stands could be out on the street in about five minutes.

Mike

[Chris]

That is why we spend so much money in the Netherlands on "coastal defense", because our infrastructure is simply not capable of evacuating our low-lying area where millions of people live below sea-level. Better safe than sorry in that case.

This became very clear in the North Sea flood of 1953 when there was a single non-reinforced dike that protected 3 million people from flooding. It broke and they manoeuvred a local barge in the hole, and saved 3 million people. Imagine, an area with 3 million people living 10 to 15 feet below sea level flooding entirely with no options to evacuate. New Orleans would've looked like a joke compared to that. After that they spent billions of € (guilders back then) on the Delta Works, which the American Society of Civil Engineers declared one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. Nowadays 5 or 6 million people are safe from flooding. It is built in a way it would only flood once per 10,000 years.

[jgb191]

This is why you don't build a city of 300,000 with no mass transit. 

Also, who would have thought that the city of Arlington would grow to be 400,000 and still rapidly increasing?  It wasn't even 20 years ago that Fort Worth had reached 400,000 and is now almost double that size in 2010.  Dallas didn't reach 400,000 until around 1950.

[Chris]

According to Wikipedia, Arlington is the largest city in the U.S. with no public transport at all. There are a few individual services targeted for certain audiences, but you can hardly call that "public".

[rte66man]

That's my point.  I too am not a big public transit fan, but even I would probably park in Fort Worth and ride the DART to either Jerry World or the Ranger's ballpark so I wouldn't have to deal with the traffic.  Poor planning all around on that one.

[bassoon1986]

It's funny to go back and look at this when in October of this year there was a Rangers game at home, a Taylor Swift concert at the Cowboys stadium, Texas/OU game at the nearby Cotton Bowl as well as the ongoing State Fair. And major construction os TX 360. Actually I remember the radio saying 360 was to be completely shut down just south of I 30 for construction on a railroad overpass. 

[txstateends]

Are there any plans to extend the DART light rail to Arlington?

Would be nice, but every time the voters there have had the choice, they've voted down transit initiatives.  The RR to the south of the Rangers/Cowboys area is a very busy Union Pacific line that also carries Amtrak.  The nearest transit rail is the Trinity Railway Express that runs through south Irving, south of DFW Airport, and just north of Arlington.  There's not even flyer service that ever connects the stadium area to the TRE.  So for now, it's drive at your own risk, or stay home and watch the TV version.  And don't think you'll get off cheap by parking at the Walmart across from Jerry's monstrosity.  They WILL tow you.

[txstateends]

I remember the radio saying 360 was to be completely shut down just south of I 30 for construction on a railroad overpass. 

The map shows that area; it's where TX 180 crosses TX 360.  This exit area has historically been one of the most backed-up along TX 360, basically because it's been the narrowest part (and one of the oldest sections of the road).  The road work to redo both TX 180's bridge and the Union Pacific RR bridge will result in a wider underpass along with new service roads that weren't there before.

[ARMOURERERIC]

The layout looks very well set up for a loop elevated monorail or something that connects to an outlying satelite parking set up.  Build a few multi-level garages a mile or 2 away and grap a monorail to your venue.