Comments on: What’s Up With Traffic at Burning Man?

By: kara noble

kara noble — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 19:59:19 +0000

brilliant idea. looking forward to ALL of it!!

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By: TV Viewer

TV Viewer — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:15:59 +0000

It wasn’t helpful to have BMIR announcers giving false information as to wait times during Mondays ingress last year.

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By: mike

mike — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 22:44:04 +0000

Please add more porta-potties to the exodus….If people get stuck in it 8+ hours like last year, there really needs to be more fully stocked porta-potties to accomodate such an extended stay on the way out.

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By: Prince

Prince — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:40:27 +0000

Please do a better job about educating people about pulse. This is my crews 5th year & I have no idea how we had had not heard of this.

Could we move the Temple Burn to Noon on Sunday?

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By: Steve "Sparky" Pucillo

Steve "Sparky" Pucillo — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 05:09:42 +0000

I might mention that I volunteered to work the entrance and was turned down! No kidding!

The more inspectors you have the faster the entrance the smaller the line!

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By: jim

jim — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 04:56:43 +0000

Build a simple RR stop on the border of the playa and charter a train from the east and west to stop there. Coordinate truck and container deliveries from key cities or get your freinds with RV to bring your stuff so that you can take the train.

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By: Steve "Sparky" Pucillo

Steve "Sparky" Pucillo — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 04:56:37 +0000

My biggest issue is with the entrance. The exit is a physical limitation of the roadway. The entrance is MAN MADE and that is B.S.!

Has anyone noticed the railway that goes from Reno to Gerlach and along lake bed?
You can haul a lot of weight very cheaply on Rail!

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By: larry finley

larry finley — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 23:31:14 +0000

I used to volunteer for Exodus. I got a free ticket. Real cool. We are all certified with the State of Nevada as flaggers, and trained to implement safety and uniform proceedures.
I thought that everyone was on board and experienced traffic control at events like high school football games and concerts where the maximum amount of people are encouraged to enter the road,and the occasional cross traffic was required to stay put for a minute or two to wait for a break in traffic or for a few cars.
But this is just not true with exodus. We aren’t told this officially, but burningman has made an arrangement with someone of power to use the flaggers to avoid any inconvenience with local traffic. This means, that when a flagger sees an oncomming car moving in at 60 mph, they stop all exodus to the road so the speeding car can blow on through. This is the sad policy of exodus. They won’t admit it, but they can speed up exodus times tremendiously if they had managers with balls.
So I now stay late and help the camp pack up. Problem solved for me.

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By: Zesmeralda

Zesmeralda — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:34:45 +0000

I understand that last year a car accident closed down the road to Reno for hours – this added to the delay for Exodus. That may have been the accident Irene was talking about. So sorry about your accident Irene and very glad you are Okay.

I had planned to stay until Tuesday anyway. Packed up Tuesday morning and drove out with “0″ line “0″ wait. So I highly recommend just hanging over one more night.

As for entry – the earliest I ever arrived was Tuesday, sometimes later in the week. The longest entry wait I have had was about 3 hours. I didn’t plan to come late – but it worked out that way for many reasons. So going from Tuesday to Tuesday might be an option for some.

This year however I do want to try getting in Sunday or Monday so will probably have a long wait, but still will leave on Tuesday.

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By: Flygirl

Flygirl — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 06:45:20 +0000

Professional transportation planner here. The key to reducing traffic congestion is to reduce the number of vehicles. Don’t think cycling to the playa is the safest solution so that pretty much leaves mass transit – i.e. buses. If each 52-seater coach can take say, 25 burners+gear, that’s the equivalent of approx 8 cars in the roadspace of 2 – a 75% reduction in traffic.
What we therefore need to do is find ways to persuade more people to use mass transit. Just like high occupancy vehicle lanes on the highway which give a benefit in return for ride sharing, why not have a high occupancy vehicle lane at gate/exodus to motivate people to take transit? There are buses to the burn being organised this year. If everyone knew in advance that buses (or say, any vehicle with 6+ people in it) would get to skip the queue, that would provide significant motivation to join up in a vehicle with others, which makes the queue shorter for everyone.

(declaration of vested interest: I’m taking one of the buses. BORG have so far said that they can’t queue jump. But as a professional, I believe BORG is missing a golden opportunity to cut down on traffic in future years by not letting high occupancy vehicles skip the queue)

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