Hurry up and wait

PALMER — The longest line at the Alaska State Fair may be the one to get onto the fairgrounds. With the state’s largest party in full swing, motorists on the main arteries leading to the fair are finding plenty of company on Valley highways.

“It was crazy coming in, just bumper-to-bumper,” said Wasilla resident George Lorenz.

Lorenz brought his wife and children to the fair’s opening day on Thursday, and said the traffic on the Glenn Highway north of the Parks Highway was “crawling along.” It took about 30 minutes to get from the Parks to a parking space at the fair.

“The ride to Palmer wasn’t too bad, but once you got off the highway, it took a lot longer,” he said. “It was moving, but bumper-to-bumper.”

During peak fair-going hours, traffic is also backed up for several miles on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, where a trip to the fair from the intersection of Seward Meridian Parkway took about an hour.

The fair opened at noon on Thursday and was also running a promotion that anyone who got there before 2 p.m. could have $2 admission. A promotion such as reduced admission at a peak time means motorists will just have to be patient getting to the fair, said Cmdr. Tom Ramaley of the Palmer Police Department.

“There are just too many people and they’re going to be backed up,” he said. “We just have limited roads and too many people. It is what it is. It’s going to be crowded. Just be patient; have a good time. It’s going to be slow.”

Peak hours are at fair opening and closing times, he said, especially on the weekends. On weekdays, opening is also busy, but so is the 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. block, where many people are getting off work and coming to the fair for the evening.

“We do this every year,” Remaley said. “All we ask is just be patient.”

To help facilitate traffic, the state fair contracts with an event organizer, StarPlex, and hires certified flaggers, said Dean Phipps, marketing director for the fair.

“The big difference is we have a company that has experienced people in charge,” he said. “They’re quite professional. Also, the biggest thing they’ve done is use certified flaggers. They cost more; it’s not cheap, but it’s probably one of the best things we’ve done.”

But there’s isn’t any magic number of flaggers on the roads that can alleviate the congestion, Phipps said.

“Our biggest problem is we don’t have control over the two lanes from the Parks Highway,” he said. “We have two lanes going, then bam! It’s one lane.”

The opening day logjam was a symptom that shows how the fair has grown with the state’s population, Phipps said.

“Like on the first day, we had 9,000 people that came before 2 p.m.,” he said. “The fair opened at noon, and by 2 we just had so many people.”

The fair also takes other steps to help get vehicles off the roads, he said. Last year, staging areas were created for weekend crowds. Those areas are designed to take a lot of cars off the road quickly, then take care of parking them.

“So, when they get 500 cars in a hurry, they can let them all in and string them around rather than let them back up on the road,” Phipps said.

For Palmer police, the fair is always a challenge, Remaley said. In addition to stepping up patrols, the large increase in traffic also strains response. In 2009, the department averaged 18 responses to accidents a month. During the 12 days of the fair, they responded to 19 accidents.

“It does increase, and we do all we can do,” he said. “That’s the whole reason the Alaska State Troopers also are in the area. We try to beef up enforcement, but there’s just too much going on. … Until we get a better road network, it’s never going to be perfect. There are just too many cars.”

Alaska Department of Transportation has a plan to at some point widen the Glenn Highway to four lanes, but that’s not in the immediate future, he said. Until then, the best advice Remaley and Phipps has for fairgoers is to resign themselves to the fact that it’s going to take some time to get to the fair.

And there’s one other tip Remaley has that can make getting home from the fair a little less stressful — remember where you parked. If you have a cell phone or digital camera, take a quick photo of the lot with a marker visible so you can look at it later.

“We probably get 12 to 15 stolen car reports a year at the fair, and in all the years I’ve been here, only one of them has actually been a stolen vehicle.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.