SFWOA Hyper?

The thing about WOA and traffic. Here it is. WOA is not the problem. At least it has to become much, much bigger before they become part of the problem. As it stands traffic for the park (which improved greatly with the merger, one of the few things to be greatful for because of it), is only a problem on weekends at the end of June, through July and the first two or three weeks of August. Add in July 4th if it's mid week. That's it. No more, no less. Plus the traffic is only a problem at the times when people enter the park in the morning and early afternoon. Sure gettting out of the lot at night is a pain, but is there ever any real problems after you get out of the lot?

Now let's see, since the park only puts a strain on the roadways on busy Saturdays or Sundays we can estimate that it takes an attendance of about 40,000 to create such issues. And i think that is being concervative. So let us extrapolate. 40,000 people per day, over seven days a week, over ten weeks during the full time operation, let's see... that gives us a summer gate of about 2.8 mil. Add in May attendance plus Sept and Oct and that puts us up to a minimum of 3.5 mil easily before there is a daily problem with park traffic. That is even above CP monsterous proportions.

The problems with Aurora, Twinsburg, Solon and Geauga County traffic stems from uncontroled commercial, retail and housing growth. The traffic is the same every day because people like living out in Russel and driving to Solon in their SUV to work in the Cleveland Clinic branch. Or they get out of school in Aurora and drive down 43 to goto the restaurants in Solon. or any other sort of daily use caused by one of the faster growing areas in the region. That's your traffic problem right there.

Between SFO and SWO in 2000 they were able to put through nearly 3 mill, and the traffic was somewhat a problem in part because some people were coming from the turnpike and wanted to goto SFO or others from Cleveland wanted the whale. Now with one park there is no need to cross each other to get where you want to go.

My big problem with SFI is how little they allow the local management in deciding how to spend the capital. Even if a park wants to spend money on bathrooms or new food stands they are often told no by the big shots. So even if the park wants to stop and improve on the little things they are most often shot down.

But let's not forget about the shopping center being built immediately across from SFWoA. That's going to bring in tons of traffic on it's own. Combine that with the heaver traffic in the area when the park is open and you've got a lot of cars on Rt 43. The bad thing is that the shopping center traffic will be year-round.

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Scott W. Short
scott@midwestcoastercentral.com
http://www.midwestcoastercentral.com

A good point not to be ignored. But traffic is heavy all the time now in and around Solon. I have long since given up rolling into the park on 43; even during the offseason. If the park were to suddenly dissapear into a void in another universe the driving in that park of Ohio would not improve one bit.