Pete Freedman
Dallas Is Already Among The Worst Traffic Cities In The Nation, And Things Only Get Worse During The State Fair Of Texas’ Annual Run.
Unlike seemingly every other media outlet in Dallas and, to a degree, the whole goddamn state, we here at Central Track aren’t exactly enamored with the State Fair of Texas. Why? Because, for starters, we’re not kids any more, and we’re no longer oblivious to the ways of the world. But also for a litany of other reasons, which we’ll happily run down for you here, one per day, over the entire course of the fair’s 2019 run, adding to the list we ran throughout the fair’s 2017 run.
Even if you’ve only lived in Dallas a short while, you can likely personally attest to the nightmarish traffic jams our city’s roads regularly suffer through. Anecdotal evidence aside, though, hard data also backs this up: Year in and year out, our city ranks among the nation’s worst in terms of road congestion.
We’re not shocking anyone with the above reveals, we know. Just the same, the following statement too shouldn’t surprise: Dallas’ already-bad traffic situation only gets worse during the State Fair of Texas’ annual run each fall, which essentially turns main Fair Park feeder highway Interstate 30 into a parking lot for a whole 24 days straight.
On the surface, the fair seems to get that it negatively contributes to Dallas traffic. It dedicates a section of its own website toward showing attendees how Dallas Area Rapid Transit can help them get to Fair Park and it pushes local media coverage of the DART discounts and service increases throughout its run. But these are only the shallowest of concessions, frankly.
Fact is, the State Fair of Texas actively encourages this traffic. What, you think it’s an accident that 200 of Fair Park’s 277 acres are dedicated to parking lots? Please. The fair’s egregious use of Fair Park land for this purpose — along with the racist ones — shows just how inherently complicit it is in the city’s annual increase in traffic. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that, if there was less dedication to parking at Fair Park, people would be forced to take other means of transportation to get to it — including, yes, means such as DART, which, though quite flawed itself, can also prove surprisingly efficient at times.
This issue peaks each year during the annual headache that is TX/OU weekend as University of Texas and University of Oklahoma football fans descend upon our city from points north and south to watch their teams face off at the Cotton Bowl in the middle of the fair’s run, their negative effect on area traffic too getting its share of local media attention. To accommodate these additional crowds — they’re usually easy to spot; catch them driving the wrong way down one-way streets or attempting multiple last-minute lane shifts because they didn’t realize their exits were fast approaching — the fair makes one particularly startling concession. On top of all of its other parking, the fair also boasts a 2,700-spot parking lot known as Boxwood that it only opens on the day of the Texas-OU game. One day out of the whole year!
Does this help… anyone? No, of course not! It’s actually a provable hindrance, as a significant reason for the fair being such a drain on Dallas police is its need to hire cops to direct traffic in and out of its grounds.
Still don’t want to blame the fair for figuratively driving the city into the ground? Well, how about literally, then? After this year’s Texas-Oklahoma football game this past Saturday, a Dallas cop directing traffic along the fairgrounds was injured and sent to the hospital when a driver, now under investigation for a DWI, struck said officer with their vehicle.
Turns out, the fair’s worst rides aren’t the ones on the midway, but the ones its attendees take to and from Fair Park.
More Reasons Why The State Fair Of Texas Sucks:
- Its history is super racist!
- It’s a major drain on Dallas police!
- It’s bad for your health!
- It’s so damn expensive!
- It’s not the economic driver it says it is!
- It’s a super shitty neighbor!
- It’s an altar to false idols!
- It makes Fair Park useless!
- It wastes city funds on out-of-towners!
- It exploits cute animals!
- Its executives take home too much money!
- Everything on the midway is a ripoff.
- It has willfully ignored its obligations and allowed Fair Park to fall into disrepair!
- It refuses to be transparent about the way it spends public funds.
- It can’t handle Fair Park’s long-term needs.
- Its lauded scholarship program is a joke compared to those of other, similar events.
- It uses fear tactics in its negotiations with the city.
- It goes out of its way to shield its crowds from the poor black neighborhood that surrounds Fair Park.
- Its low-level employees get burned by its executives’ bad business decisions.
- Its ticket-based economy is designed to squeeze even more cash out of attendees.
- It cares way too much about parking lots that go unused most of the year.
- It’s petty as fuck.
- It celebrates humanity’s fucked up relationship with livestock.
- It refuses to change.
- It can be easily debated.
- Its concert bookings could be heated up a few degrees.
- It’s tearing the Fletcher family apart!
- It’s spent a least $1 million to keep its books out of the public eye. What’s it hiding?
- It fired a beloved employee, claiming his request to attend a charity event was a contract violation.
- It has become a literal joke.
- Who’s buying what they’re selling?
- Its racist roots are still being unearthed by national scholars.
- It’s in bed with its would-be critics.
- It thinks you’re super dumb.
- It caters to Dallas’ elite in ways you’ve never even heard of because you’re such a plebe.
- No, seriously, its racist past is super troubling.
- Its attendance is in decline — to the point where other state fairs that last half as long draw bigger annual attendance figures.
- It caters too much to TX/OU weekend.
- Even its booze is gimmicky.
- It’s predictable.
- It uses its powerful friends to rush the city into meeting its demands.