Campus police to modify gameday traffic scheme

The campus police are preparing for the second football game at the new E. Claiborne Robins Stadium after a successful launch of the game-day traffic and parking procedures at last week's first home game, Administrative Services Lieutenant John Jacobs said.

Although he doesn't expect substantial changes in procedure since last Saturday, Jacobs said the University of Richmond Police Department would have to make some modifications to the traffic and parking redistribution on campus before this Saturday's game against the University of Delaware.

Because more people will be on campus this Saturday for Family Weekend at Richmond, Jacobs said he was expecting as many as 1,000 more cars on campus.

If the weather forecast is accurate, it is hoped that all cars will be able to park on pavement on campus again this weekend, Jacobs said.

Since the URPD was able to direct many students to park their vehicles on grass or interior lots last weekend, more parking spaces were made available to game traffic, which improved traffic flow and prevented the police from having to turn incoming cars to community streets to park, Jacobs said.

"On Saturday, we still had Modlin, CV lot, a small section of R lot and some space in the Alumni parking lot [available to park more cars]," Jacobs said. "Only a handful of cars -- and that's on and off campus -- were towed."

Jacobs credited the smooth traffic and parking redistribution on Saturday to good weather, the students' cooperation and more than a year of planning by the URPD, Henrico Police, Richmond Police, local fire departments, student groups, the athletic department, community groups and game-day events crew.

Jacobs has been attending as many as three meetings per day to prepare for and improve game-day traffic flow, he said.

Between the exterior and on-campus roads, the campus police supplemented their 11 officers on duty with 23 Henrico Police, 31 Richmond Police and an event staff to direct and monitor traffic on and off campus, Jacobs said.

While many expected the parking and traffic at the on-campus stadium to be more challenging than the old football stadium in Carytown, some of the differences in location worked to the URPD and ticket holders' advantage, Jacobs said.

Unlike the old stadium, police no longer had to maneuver traffic patterns around one-way roads, such as Cary St., and the traffic flow was partially alleviated since students were already on campus, Jacobs said.

Richmond City police officer James Baldwin, who was on duty at the game last Saturday, said there had been no incidents that he had heard of.

"I think this has actually gone smoother than [traffic] at the old stadium," Baldwin said.

William Bischof, RC '09, said that he arrived on campus at 8:45 a.m. for the 1 p.m. game because he had anticipated a lot of traffic and limited parking.

When Bischof's party arrived on campus, however, there was no traffic and they were ushered directly into X-lot.

Laura Walton, a resident near campus, said there had been no cars parked at the foot of her yard on College Road (as they had in the past for Richmond basketball games) or along the street that provides access to the Robins Center and Robins Stadium's main entrances.

Gigi Redmond, who lives just west of campus on Ridgeway Road, said she was pleasantly surprised by the traffic flow when she left her home at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Redmond said that as she traveled northeast on Three Chopt Road, she encountered far less traffic than she would have expected in comparison to the traffic she has witnessed in the past for basketball games.

The game time this Saturday is at 3:30 p.m. Parking lots will open again four hours prior to kickoff. For more information about game-day parking, traffic and tailgating regulations, visit www.robinsstadium.com.

Contact staff writer Kristy Burkhardt at kristy.burkhardt@richmond.edu