Poor traffic planning by UVA casts pall over Luke Combs ‘My Kinda Saturday Night’ show

The Luke Combs concert at Scott Stadium was “My Kinda Saturday Night.” Getting out of the Scott Stadium parking lot after the show, though, stretching into the early hours of Sunday morning, made me “Rethink Some Things.”

“We apologize for any delay that you or other guests experienced in exiting the concert venue on Saturday,” said Bethanie Glover, the UVA spokesperson who has to hate seeing my name pop up in her email box, but to her credit, always gets me back an answer.

I was writing her on behalf of myself and hundreds of other concertgoers who were left at a literal “Be Careful What You Wish For” standstill for more than an hour trying to get out of the West parking lot.

We should have been clued in to the “Houston, We Got a Problem” traffic disaster in the making when we all got emails earlier in the week advising us to arrive three hours before the scheduled start of the show to account for the crush of thousands of music fans coming into town.

Odd, it seemed to me, considering that, at least theoretically, event planners at the University of Virginia and local police have years of experience in managing thousands of fans coming into town for the six or seven UVA Football home games held at Scott Stadium each fall.

To be fair to the events people and the police, it’s been a while since we’ve had 60,000-plus in town for a football game – and it’s not been that long since we had traffic issues around a home game with JMU, in 2023, that drew only 55,000 to the stadium.

I mean, 55,000 is good, but 60,000, well, that’s not exactly “One Number Away.”

That email signaled to us, I now see, in retrospect, that the event planning foresaw the problems with traffic congestion that became obvious after the concert.

The most obvious issue was the decision of whoever was in charge of getting people out of the parking lots to point everybody in the direction of Fontaine Avenue.

I couldn’t see this for myself, because I was stuck in the West parking lot at the stadium, my “Fast Car” stuck in park, but I presume traffic hit the bottleneck at the intersection of Maury Avenue, Jefferson Park Avenue and Fontaine Avenue, and made the whole area into an oversized parking lot, moving one vehicle at a time.

My wife and I were among a group of drivers pleading with a police officer directing traffic out of the West parking lot to please, please, please let us go in the direction of Ivy Road instead, so that we could get “Back in the Saddle” again.

The officer, though, stuck to the plan – she even called in for backup, in the form of a Virginia State Police trooper, who parked his cruiser in the Alderman Road lane that would have allowed vehicles to proceed toward Ivy Road, and barked commands at motorists to get back in their vehicles, not that he had that authority.

“I Ain’t No Cowboy,” indeed.

I’ve reached out to UVA Police, Charlottesville Police, Albemarle County Police and the VSP to try to ascertain the identities of the officer who was clearly in over her head with the assignment and the trooper who apparently cut class at the academy to watch “Walking Tall” – 1 and 2.

The image in my head of that guy as Buford Pusser – sorry, but I’ll always “Remember Him That Way.”

Nobody fessed up to employing the officer who was directing traffic – here I have to concede, “She Got the Best of Me” – and the VSP cut off responding to my inquiry on the ID of the trooper after asking a couple of questions, and sensing that I actually was planning to address this in print.

Leaving poor Bethanie Glover, who doesn’t get paid nearly enough to have to deal with me, to give me the only official response.

“The concert was a result of months of unified planning and collaboration between UVA and other law enforcement entities, as well as UVA teams dedicated to security, venue logistics, emergency management, parking, facilities management, and more,” Glover said.

“We understand the frustration that comes with event traffic, and thank concertgoers for their patience with security and traffic control personnel. Our top priority is always safety, and ensuring traffic enters and exits Grounds as safely and efficiently as possible is our goal in any major event.

“Thanks again for understanding, as managing a crowd of thousands is a challenge, and we dedicated numerous teams and individuals to help make the experience as safe, enjoyable and convenient as possible,” Glover said.

So much to unpack there, but bottom line: last night’s fiasco was the “result of months of unified planning and collaboration”?

That’s the kind of thought that will leave you “Sleepless in a Hotel Room.”

I don’t know that I’d want folks thinking that – that the best and brightest minds that UVA and local police can put to getting people out of a concert at Scott Stadium can’t foresee that sending 25,000 vehicles to a single chokepoint not only isn’t going to work, but is going to lead to a lot of people, including me, saying, not going to do this ever again.

I think folks expect a little difficulty getting out of a football game or big concert that draws 60,000 people, but it’s one thing to at least be inching forward and feeling like you’re making progress, and another entirely to be sitting for an hour, not moving at all, when there’s an obvious solution that it’s impossible to believe the smart people didn’t think of in their supposed months of planning.

Credit goes there to two other unnamed local police officers, who arrived at the scene as the officer directing traffic took the approach of completely shutting down and not letting anybody move, in any direction, and the state trooper continued berating frustrated concertgoers, like taking the exact opposite approach to de-escalating was ever going to work.

My wife calmly explained to the late-arriving officers the situation, the possible solution – and the two walked over to the officer directing traffic, talked it out, motioned to the trooper, who then moved his cruiser, and, whaddya know.

We made our way down Alderman, got through the light at Ivy Road, and were on I-64 five minutes later.

Guys, whoever you are, seriously, “This One’s for You.”