I appreciate the suggestions. I have a lot of good options including busing, park and ride, parking passes, and so on.
I live a couple blocks west of Polo Park on the South side of Portage. Obviously, the old stadium location was a pretty sweet deal for me as I could walk or bike and be there in no time at all. I had front row seats in the balcony directly overlooking Section S. They were among the best seats in the house and were pretty darn cheap, too. Never missed a game for anything short of weddings or funerals. Then 2013 came with our new stadium already a year late, leaking water from cracks in the balcony down onto the East stands... and on the grand opening preseason game we were getting beat so bad by halftime that people were already trying to leave... but couldn't because traffic was backed up for mile after tragic mile by people still trying to get to the game. It was actually pretty funny. Garth Buchko, Joe Mack, Tim Burke, Max Hall, the whole crew was there and we all know how that season went down.
I still biked or bused to every game mostly without incident. I even ran across ChaosMonkey once or twice. Safely followed the Assiniboine bike path, cross to Wellington, enjoy the nicely swept-twice-a-week roads up to Osborne Village, then take Pembina all the way South to the campus. The painted lines on the road indicating a bike path and plastic bollards every 20 feet made me feel real safe, let me tell you. Going under the tracks was always a treat, especially if it had rained recently. Real nice of people to yield to cyclists at marked bike paths when they're in a rush to get to Staples or A and f'ng W's. The Final Boss was always crossing Bishop over the Pembina bridge and getting past the turnoff without being clipped by someone in a hurry because of all the stadium traffic. Big stretches of this route has been under heavy construction for a couple years and will continue to be under construction for a couple more. Same for Waverly. Kenaston is about to get pretty busy, too. Every major route North and South from my place is fubar'd. Living as far as I do now, in order to drive to the Greenway I'm either detouring to Moray up to Wilkes (risking ******* trains, hence all the construction everywhere!) or going through the construction and stadium traffic... to avoid traffic while biking ahaha.
I hope you're just generalizing and not talking about me. Since cancelling my ST's after the 2013 shitshow I've found life is better watching 2/3 of the home games in the company of family and friends where the screens are big, the beers are cheap and varied, and the couch has a butt groove with your name on it. After a recent career change I work just off campus and drive to and from every day. It's certainly not 'too far'. I always wanted to be a 40 year season ticket holder and I'm still young enough to maybe make that happen... but until our roads are better than Baghdad's I'd rather enjoy my game day experience without the hassle or frustration and save the coin for college.
According to my neck and my back I'm on the young end of the old crowd. I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed the new place is noticeably worse traffic-wise despite all the tweaks and enhancements. It's just a fact, but you'd actually have to live here and attend games regularly to know this. Unprecedented construction compounds this. The Alberta peanut gallery is entitled to their uninformed opinion, but it's just that.
Holy **** this is rich
