Hey Parking Staff: the Shuttle to St Paul Campus needs attention

Donate To GopherHole
Rick Mons

Rick Mons

The former MN Snowman
Joined
Aug 7, 2009
Messages
1,272
Reaction score
6
Points
36
The parking folks need to go back to the drawing board in order to handle those who park on the St Paul Campus (including the fairgrounds lot) and take the shuttle to the game.

After the game, it was really FUBAR. Long lines to get onto a bus, long wait for fans to get onto a bus, inadequate number of buses, and inadequate number of staff. Oh, and really inadequate planning (maybe no planning?)

It took us over an hour to get on a bus. There were other fans who probably waited even longer. Only those who left early would have had an easier time of it.

Sad to say, but the Iowegians know how to handle a crowd with their shuttle via train to their off-site parking. Parking staff, take a trip down to Kinnick. If you go down there, here's what you'll see:

  • as fans enter the area for the shuttle, there's plenty of staff directing fans where to line up and there's ample room for people to wait.
  • fans are directed to a "staging" area where the number of fans is roughly equivalent to each train car's capacity. For the Gophers, substitute "bus" for "train car"
  • As the vehicles come into the loading area, fans in each staging area get on the bus in a fairly orderly fashion, and the bus takes off once the staging area is empty. Then the process begins again with new fans getting into the staging area as directed by staff.
  • Fans with special needs (e.g. fans in wheelchairs, fans on crutches, fans using canes, etc) are put at a separate staging area and vehicles with entry ramps and sufficient staff who know how to operate the ramps are there to assist. Those school buses really don't work very well.

Yep, I know it was the first time ... and a lot of us cut you some slack But you know how many parking spots you've pre-sold and have three hours to adjust the number of buses and staff based upon how many additional spots were sold on a cash basis. There's really no excuse not to have a much better handle on this. Hope you're prepare for next week's game or things could get pretty ugly.

BTW, in addition to those who bought the pre-paid parking access, you really, really owe an apology to the Air Force fans. You recommend that they park in this lot ... and then give them inferior service. Visiting fans -- along with those of us who paid in advance for this "service" -- really deserve better. Well, maybe not the Wisconsin folks ....
 


Hahahaha!! Now you all know why so many students left the dome so early for all those games! Sucks having to take the bus, doesnt it!!

Seriously though, I hope they do iron that out for you guys. Sounds like it was a royal pain.

I really hope this doesn't get everyone leaving early all the time. We are better than that now.
 

Kinnick and Iowa

For the record...Iowa does a very good job of using the entire campus plus buses to facilitate game day parking and access to the game itself.

Been to Kinnick a half-dozen times with the Hawk brother-in-law and fact is they have shuttles running constantly from all over the campus.

GopherHoler's should let the admin/sports dept. know respectfully of the issues associated with tonight. It's unlikely that any issue being faced can't be resolved with additional planning, resources, or any combination of factors.

Go Gophers! Beat the Bears!
 

MrGopher said:
Hahahaha!! Now you all know why so many students left the dome so early for all those games! Sucks having to take the bus, doesnt it!!

Seriously though, I hope they do iron that out for you guys. Sounds like it was a royal pain.

I really hope this doesn't get everyone leaving early all the time. We are better than that now.
Click to expand...

well, if people plan on leaving a game early just because they might have to wait a little while for a shuttle bus then that says a lot about our sometimes very fickle fan base who always seem to be looking for SOMETHING to complain about. not saying there isn't room for improvement on the st. paul shuttle bus operation (it was the first game peple! - as rick mentioned), but people really need to chill out as i am sure they will get it figured out. :rolleyes:
 


Bronko Nagurski Gopher said:
well, if people plan on leaving a game early just because they might have to wait a little while for a shuttle bus then that says a lot about our sometimes very fickle fan base who always seem to be looking for SOMETHING to complain about. not saying there isn't room for improvement on the st. paul shuttle bus operation (it was the first game peple! - as rick mentioned), but people really need to chill out as i am sure they will get it figured out. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Don't disagree, but they need to address it or there will be fights breaking out. It was getting close to that point when we just decided to hoof it back to St. Paul. If you'd have seen the madness out there, you wouldn't disagree.
 

MBAGuy said:
Don't disagree, but they need to address it or there will be fights breaking out. It was getting close to that point when we just decided to hoof it back to St. Paul. If you'd have seen the madness out there, you wouldn't disagree.
Click to expand...

+1
good thing no alcohol was served at the game or it could have gotten riotous fast
 


MBAGuy said:
Don't disagree, but they need to address it or there will be fights breaking out. It was getting close to that point when we just decided to hoof it back to St. Paul. If you'd have seen the madness out there, you wouldn't disagree.
Click to expand...

This is exactly right. It was complete chaos and the anger and frustration levels were rising rapidly.
 



Oak Street ramp

We had no problem getting out of the Oak Street ramp but getting into the ramp off the street was difficult with the pedestrians coming by in the sidewalk. It could easily be solved by having one of the ramp staff help stopping pedestrians every few seconds while they let some cars in.
 

e-mail address for U's Parking Service

complaints or "way-to-go's" can be e-mailed to [email protected]

I sent 'em an e-mail and doesn't take much to guess what type of e-mail I sent 'em :p
 


We left right when the final second ticked off the clock--we ended up waiting for about 10-15 minutes, which wasn't bad, but it was still a mess--people running down the street in front of buses, etc. etc. They needed more workers (they could have easily paid for them with the immense loss in concession sales due to running out of food!) and has been mentioned, some sort of crowd control fencing, gates, etc.

I think the best bet for an email contact is the head of parking and transportation services:

Bob W Baker
Appointment: Director Campus/College Level
Parking and Transportation Servi (office: Parking and Transportation Services)
UMN Twin Cities
E-mail Address: [email protected]
Internet ID: baker006
Office Address: Parking and Transportation Services
300 T S B
511 Washington Ave SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Campus Mail: Parking and Transportation Srvs
Room 302 TSB
1983
511 Washington Ave S E
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Office Phone: +1 612-626-7275
 



BTW, I sent AD Joel Maturi a cc of the e-mail I sent to Parking & Transportation. Within 45 minutes I received an e-mail back from him thanking me for my sending him a copy and saying he expected P&T to get things straightened out.

Every time I've sent an e-mail to Maturi, I've always gotten a response. He's never defensive, always acknowledges the concern and generally explains how it's being addressed.

A lot of companies (and CEOs) would learn a great deal about service recovery if they spent some time shadowing him.
 

Hey Rick Mons

The U has heard about this. It'll be better next week.

That said, I think we can reasonably expect to wait (I'm in St Paul too) 15-20, maybe even 30 minutes for a bus after close games where everyone stays to the end. What they need to fix is the logistics of the line for those buses. Once the lines were organized last night, they started flowing and people complained a lot less.
 

I don't mind a 15-20 minute wait as long as there's decent crowd control and you see them making headway. It took a long time for either last night when we got there ... and we'd waited about 10-15 minutes after the game.

Now that we know that bus service runs longer than one hour (the info on the web site and in the mailing with the parking passes was pretty misleading), we'll probably stay a bit longer. (Especially on day-time games)
 

Bronko Nagurski Gopher said:
????? well, i guess i am embarrassed for you considering how far you are blowing it out of proportion in all of these threads while failing to consider that it was the first game. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I can assure you that no one is blowing anything out of proportion. The shuttle bus debacle was 100% inexcusable in every way regardless of it being the first game. The issue was a complete lack of adequate planning - there was no crowd control plan, not nearly enough staff directing people and at the end of a long day people's nerves were shot. A lack of EXECUTION on opening day is excusable - a lack of PLANNING is not.

Many people had to wait over an hour to get a shuttle to the St. Paul campus - and many of those people had children with them. Fans should not have to choose between leaving a game early to avoid a shuttle hassle or leaving the kids at home because they don't have adult patience to withstand the chaos. Let's expect more out of all facets of this program - including the stadium and transportation operations.
 

We were part of that debacle. On the stadium side of the street there was a pen where we all got stuck by an officer who wouldn't let anyone cross. He said it was because it was too full over on the other side of the street where the buses were loading. Unfortunately, outside of the pen people were streaming across the street and kept filling the spot we were waiting for. We eventually said screw this and walked across the street anyway. We skipped the huge group waiting for the buses and walked through the parking lot there to the first few buses that were loading. Got on no problem. I have no problem waiting my turn, but this was ridiculous. On the bright side, leaving the state fair parking lot was really easy. We stayed around for about 30 minutes while we had a beer or two and then headed out. Hopefully it works better this week although I'll be avoiding the pen altogether.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom