Traffic, other snags turn off many fans

Lisa Snedeker and Jace Radke

Monday, March 8, 1999 | 10:41 a.m.

These are some serious race fans.

Neither multiple-hour traffic jams, long waits in line for food and beverages nor dirty restrooms kept a record-breaking crowd from rooting for their favorite drivers at Sunday's Las Vegas 400.

But many fans say they don't plan on coming back to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway next year for NASCAR's Winston Cup Series race because of traffic problems at the Speedway.

Saturday an estimated 72,000 fans turned out to the track north of Las Vegas for the Busch Series race while Sunday saw a record crowd estimated at 125,000-plus -- 20,000 more than were drawn to last year's inaugural race, which was hailed as the largest crowd to attend any single sporting event in Nevada's history.

Despite a report from the Nevada Highway Patrol that traffic into the facility went smoothly, traffic woes continued to plague the speedway, according to race fans.

A Colorado Springs, Colo., couple who came to see the Busch and Winston Cup races and ended up getting married said they would not come back next year because of the traffic.

"I don't care if I come again," Debbie Hooker said. She added that she was with a group of six people who left for the track at 7:30 a.m. and arrived after 10. "It's ridiculous. The mayor and the guy in charge of this place need to deal with this."

The Hookers may have been among the luckier fans; many who took CAT buses got to the speedway after the race started.

"I won't be coming back unless they give me a free ticket, and even then I'd have to think about it," Tim Busha of Wisconsin said.

Fans reported missing as many as 90 of the race's 267 laps because of the traffic congestion.

Fans from Pennsylvania said they felt cheated that they had missed the start of the race, even though they felt that they had left extra early to avoid traffic problems.

"We got on a bus at 7:30 a.m. near the Tropicana, which gave us four hours, and we still didn't make it in time," David Zieger, a bus mechanic from Pennsylvania, said. "One of the nicest things in the world is watching the start of a NASCAR race, and we missed it."

The official start time was 11:30 a.m., which is when live television coverage by ABC began. But the green flag didn't go up until 11:57 a.m., a time set by the network.

A Citizen's Area Transit spokesman said that some fans who took the bus were late because the Nevada Highway Patrol shut down an express lane on Las Vegas Boulevard designated for buses and taxis going to the speedway.

NHP spokesman Scott Flabi said that the express lane was never shut down but that as the start of the race grew closer, cars were allowed into the lane.

"Traffic was flowing in pretty well, and from the press box it looked like most of the seats were filled when the race started," Flabi said.

CAT was charging fans $1.50 for rides to and from the speedway. Nearly 70 buses made continuous round trips between the speedway and various stops along the Strip.

Some fans got impatient with the bumper-to-bumper grind on Las Vegas Boulevard on the way to the race. One driver cut through traffic and collided with a North Las Vegas police motorcycle officer.

The officer, Sgt. Dave Nora, suffered only minor injuries, and the driver was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident, department spokesman Lt. Joe Forti said.

NASCAR driver Rick Mast found himself in danger of missing the race because of the traffic. In a radio interview Mast said that he had trouble starting his car at Caesars Palace on Sunday morning, and by the time he got it going, it was 7:20 a.m.

Mast said he hit the gridlock on Interstate 15 and Las Vegas Boulevard, so he started driving across front lawns to make a 9:30 a.m. drivers meeting. Mast was pulled over but explained his situation to police and was given an escort to the track.

The traffic situation, said Jeff Motley, director of Speedway public relations, was "a heck of a lot better than last year."

He expects handling of traffic to improve as time goes by.

"A lot of tracks have been doing this for 30 years," he said today. "The more people get accustomed to the track, the more accustomed they will get to handling traffic."

Motley said one big problem was that 99 percent of the traffic was from one direction, the south.

Fans said they were generally happy with the race and the facilities once they got inside. There were some complaints about the restrooms, which were a bone of contention at last year's race, but most fans said they appreciated the added temporary restrooms and porta-potties.

Other fans grumbled about $12 mini-pitchers of beer, $6 bratwurst and $3 lemonade shake-ups.

Jeff Burton blew past his brother, Ward Burton, to win the race and signal the start of an escape attempt from the speedway that would have made former inmates of Alcatraz proud.

Fans lined up to board taxis, limousines, helicopters and buses hoping to beat the traffic out of the speedway. Those in their own cars or taxis made it out of the parking lots only to be greeted by bumper-to-bumper traffic, while many of those taking buses had to wait several hours before joining the slowly ebbing flow of traffic.

The option of flying out on a helicopter also required a wait of several hours, and $75 to $300 a person.

"Last year we came in a rented car, and it took us a couple of hours to get out," said Mark Hummel who traveled to the race with Bud and Dave Tingley from New Haven, Conn. "This year everyone was saying to take mass transit, and it looks like it's going to take at least four hours for us to get out of here."

The lines to the buses were in a vacant dirt lot next to the helicopter landing pads, forcing fans to breath the dust kicked up as the choppers landed every few minutes.

"It's not like they didn't know that these people were coming," Dave Tingley said. "Everyone says Las Vegas knows how to handle big crowds, but they don't out here."

Even driver Geoffrey Bodine, while disappointed he was knocked out of the race early, said in an interview that the upside was he should be able to beat the traffic to the airport.

Metro officers reported that despite it all, the crowd was well behaved.

"The problem you run into out there is that there are really only two roads, Las Vegas Boulevard and I-15," Forti said. "I don't know what the solution is, but we're going to have to think of something."