Colorado

of the July 4 Denver Post:

"Empower Field nightmare:
once you arrive, you can
never leave
The Stones were awesome on
June 20. Trying to get home was
a scary mess.
The ride-hail situation at Empower
Field is beyond dangerous
and frustrating. Can stadium
management figure out a
way for people to meet their ridehail
drivers without walking a
tediously long and twisted path
on an unmarked, sketchy route?
I was told that there are signs
showing directions to the ridehail
pickup point, but there are
no signs. Their plan did feature
creepy, aggressive people hovering
in the alley just after Brooklyn’s.
I was grateful to be walking
in a group.
We passed at least three disabled
people struggling to walk
the dangerous, poorly lit, poorly
paved, isolated route to the Empower
Field ride-hail pickup
point. Clearly Empower Field
management does not respect,
care about or follow ADA guidelines.
Finally we arrived at the designated
ride-hail pickup point,
which was a strange, unpaved
parking lot filled with other confused
concertgoers just trying to
get home. Again there were absolutely
no signs to give some
much-needed guidance. Adding
to the mayhem, the Lyft and
Uber drivers trying to enter the
parking lot were caught in a
long, slow, congested line on 13th
Avenue. We finally left the parking
lot and walked up 13th to
meet our driver, probably cutting
30 minutes off of our wait time.
Before we walked to the ridehail
pickup point, we were directed
by two stadium employees
to go to “the taxi line” near
Gate 6 for the best and fastest
way home. After twice walking
up and down the row of parked
cars, we realized that there were
no commercial taxis, only private,
arranged car services waiting
for passengers. An organized
taxi line, for traditional
taxi services, as there are in airports,
would be a game changer.
Light rail used to be an easy, efficient
way home, but the recent
slow-down and unreliable service
takes it out of the equation, especially
at 1 a.m.
Are there plans to improve
this situation?
— Anne Albeck,
Denver"