Alcohol around Autzen Stadium – more or less

The Association Press via KGW reports the Eugene City Council has voted to legalize alcohol consumption in private parking lots near Autzen Stadium on home football game days. But perhaps the City Council members catch Duck Transit at the end of the game, since they seem to have little pity for those of us driving cars full of supporters back to I-5. They voted to cut off drinking with the final whistle, rather than two hours later as proposed in the ordinance.

That’s a bad idea for two reasons. One, I’m more than happy for drinking drivers to stay in the parking lot until the rest of us are safely on our way home. Although the Eugene police and transit authorities do a magnificent job of getting 60,000 people moving out of the stadium area with remarkably little waiting, adding those who usually continue tailgating to the queues won’t help – especially if some of them are impaired. And two, wouldn’t it be easier to watch and catch the drunk drivers if they’re leaving two hours after the rest of us?

The ordinance is likely intended to legalize what is already rampant – alcohol consumption at tailgating parties. But it’s unrealistic to set the cutoff at the end of the game. Police are far too busy with crowd control and traffic management to be patroling parking lots checking to see what revellers are drinking. And, again from my perspective, I’d rather that the alcohol consumption happen along with food consumption after the game, than having to endure tanked-up drunks returning to their seats midway through the third quarter after imbibing as much as physically possible at half time. Maybe if those folks knew they could have a beer with their brat at the BBQ after the game, they’d get back in place ready to yell on time.

Aside from the alcohol policy, the City of Eugene does amazing things with traffic and parking control at Duck football games. The City of Portland would do well to consider some of them. Streets are temporarily turned into one-way routes, to the stadium before the game, away from it afterwards. After seven years of driving there six times a year, I still get a thrill driving on the left hand side of the street (yes, I’m easily amused). In previous years, there have been traffic controllers at every intersection before and after games, helping to keep the flow smooth for transit, pedestrians, and cars from side-streets as well as the main route. This season, there seems to be one or two fewer officers after games than is needed to do the job, and backups have been common. That’s served as a good reminder that it may be worth investing in that one officer’s overtime, compared with the pollution caused by hundreds of cars sitting idling waiting to get on I-105 — and then speeding up once on I-5, increasing the risk of accidents.