Transit, long lines pose problems in Mosaic Stadium trial run

On June 10, the new Mosaic Stadium in Regina will lose its training wheels and play host to the first Saskatchewan Roughriders game at the facility.

On top of the 2017 Roughrider home game schedule, the facility will also play host to a Guns N' Roses concert on Aug. 27.

To get warmed up for those events, a concert featuring Bryan Adams was held Saturday, in part to see if all the procedures were properly up and running.

While organizers said they hoped for about 25,000 concert-goers, 21,000 people were at the stadium for the event.

Despite the turnout, Regina Exhibition Association Limited president Mark Allan said he was pleased with the results of their second test event.

He said he heard plenty of positive feedback on the new facility.

"I talked to some people that said, 'Oh, we couldn't get tickets for the first and second game so we came to this festival just so we could see what the stadium looked like.'" he said. "It kind of reminded me of people walking around New York City looking at the tall buildings when people first came in."

Everywhere the lines

It wasn't long until the honeymoon was over for some people, who complained about long lineups getting into the stadium, ordering food and using washrooms.

"There's heavy traffic in this north end of the stadium so we're going to work at some solutions for that," said Allan. "We can continue to work on things like traffic flows and service levels and wait times."

For the first Roughriders game on June 10, Allan said they are hoping to have all concessions open to alleviate wait times. At this time, they are still working on signing some of the vendors.

They will have all four entrances open to the facility, to reduce the "bottleneck" at the north gates.

Kim Onrait, executive director of city services for Regina, said they will be gathering information and data over the next week to make improvements needed leading up to the Rider season.

Transportation trials 

Onrait said they were happy to see a pick-up in the transportation services, with over 7,400 people taking transit to the event.

The main pick-up and drop-off locations were Southland Mall and Victoria Shopping Centre. Both ended up getting lined up with people waiting for a bus.

After the show, Onrait said they added 18 buses to the service to help patrons get home.

"We had people cleared out of the stadium in 45 minutes after the event, which is actually very good," he said. "In the future, for the June 10 game, we will look at some adjustments at both of those locations."

After the first three or four Rider games, Onrait said they will start to see how early people want to come to the game, which will help them better plan transit.

While some people have complained of a lack of parking in the area, Onrait said they are encouraging people away to take transit.

"There is not a lot of parking around any of these major stadiums," he said. "When we're addressing parking, that's why we want the uptake on transit to be higher."

"We feel that the plan we have right now, and what we're going to move forward with, through our ongoing discussions and fine-tuning, is going to be adequate."