Blue Bombers’ new bus system scores points with fans

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This article was published 07/07/2017 (3287 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Were major changes to transportation and parking systems enough to lure more fans to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers home opener on Friday night?

Promises of smoother arrivals and departures from Investors Group Field — backed up with an offer of free tickets if traffic backed up on the way out — may have been enough to woo some who took the bus to the game Friday. Bombers officials expected more than 30,000 fans to turn up and they were right — attendance was 30,165.

Nick and Twila Unrau were thrilled to attend their first Bomber game, but said transportation improvements had nothing to do with it.

“It’s a good opportunity for my wife and I to have a date,” said Nick, 28. Twila’s mom was available to watch their 18-month-old toddler and Nick was able to buy tickets to the game through a payroll deduction program at his work, Skybridge call centre. The young couple wouldn’t have seen the game otherwise. They have Netflix but not cable, and couldn’t have watched the Winnipeg-Calgary contest on TV. It was the first time either had been to the new stadium.

“We are extremely excited,” he said on the Park & Ride bus to the game before it left the Manitoba Hydro building on Taylor Avenue. “I’m a Stampeders fan,” he said, attracting good-natured jeers from fellow passengers. The Bombers have played the Calgary Stampeders 20 times in the last nine seasons and lost 17 of those games.

“They’re more powerful,” Unrau said. “But we’ll cheer for the home team,” he added.

The Unraus and their fellow bus riders were among the first to experience Bohemier Trail — the new transit access road to the stadium from Pembina Highway — and the new Stadium Station bus terminal.

“That was pretty good,” said Jim Hallock, who hadn’t graced a Bombers home game in more than a decade.

Starting Friday, all Winnipeg Transit and park-and-ride users entered and exited through Stadium Station outside stadium gates 3 and 4. This was expected to clear up roads for those who drove to the University of Manitoba, where there are now 5,000 parking spots on game days.

The traffic lights at the intersection of Pembina Highway and Chancellor Matheson Drive also will be altered to stay green almost four times longer than on previous CFL game days, in an effort to ensure an easy exit for drivers.

For bus riders, Stadium Station can handle up to 200 buses at a time and was designed to move 12,000 people in 15 minutes for quicker getaways after games.

But better transportation isn’t what lured Hallock and his friend Marilyn Neumann to the game.

It was Marilyn’s sister, who suggested they all go together.

“It’s my first game in 15 years,” said Hallock, who normally watches Bomber games at home on TV. “I’m a fan, but the living-room kind.”

Neumann said she’s more of a NFL fan but agreed to go to a Friday night game because she can sleep in Saturday.

“We haven’t been to the new stadium,” Hallock said. “Today’s a novelty.”

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Cheering on the Blue and Gold is no novelty, but a summertime ritual for Ev Barnett. The longtime season-ticket holder was impressed by the transit access road and the setup of Stadium Station. They’re expected to eliminate the bottleneck of post-game traffic.

“It’s nice to see some improvements,” Barnett said Friday before the game. She said she started taking the $5 Park & Ride bus service to games after driving to the Bombers first season at Investors Group Field.

“It was crazy, insane,” she recalled. “Parking wasn’t a problem; it was leaving that was a problem.”

Since moving from CanadInns Stadium at Polo Park to its larger new home at the University of Manitoba in 2013, attendance at Bomber home games has been in decline, CFL data show. In 2013, the average attendance at Investors Group Field was 91.6 per cent of its 33,422-seat capacity. In 2014, that fell to 84 per cent. In 2015 it was down to 80 per cent and in 2016, the average attendance was just 77.6 per cent of capacity.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.