Buses were overflowing, prices for Uber and Lyft were skyrocketing, and frustrated friends were arguing in the streets, stressed about finding their way home. The Outside Lands music and arts festival has returned to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, and with it comes the tangled travel logistics that undergird every music festival experience.
Because the festival, which kicked off Friday and runs through Sunday night, offers very little parking, public agencies have been working to maximize transportation options for the 75,000 concertgoers expected to get in and out of the festival. park each day of the festival.
“We are asking people to take public transport,” Mayor London Breed said at a press conference on Thursday. “The ultimate goal is to keep people safe, to make sure everyone is having fun.”
However, after the first night of the festival, featuring SZA, Phoebe Bridgers and Lil Uzi Vert, among other acts, ended on Friday, concertgoers leaving the park were met with limited and chaotic options. Transportation company prices spiked into single-digit travel prices during peak hours, while overcrowded Muni buses left long lines of customers waiting at pickup points for the next vehicle. Some waited more than an hour to be taken home.
45 minutes after the end of the first night of #outsidelands and this is the scene at almost every Muni stop I hope everyone gets home safe and soon pic.twitter.com/tqJqD3i6kG
– Mariecar Mendoza (@SFMarMendoza) August 6, 2022
For those going to the festival tonight or on Sunday, riding a bike may be the easiest way to get to and from the festival. And if the house is more than a few miles away, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is beefing up Muni service on some routes and adding temporary taxi stands outside the park, according to its website.
An active transportation hub north of Hellmen Hollow, near Transverse Drive and the Overlook, provides service to cyclists throughout the weekend from 10 a.m. to 1 hour after the end of the last act. The Hub offers valet and monitored bike parking and bike/scooter sharing services.
To provide a safe route for bikes, the city has created a two-way bike path on Martin Luther King, according to the event’s website. And, for those who don’t have a bike handy, Bay Wheels, an e-bike and bike-sharing service offered through Lyft, has set up a special station on JFK Drive, just east of Transverse Drive and near the festival entrance. On-site valets will make sure there’s an open dock for parking and a bike when you’re ready to go, according to the Outside Lands website.
Each night of the festival, Muni offers 5X Fulton Express service from Golden Gate Park to the Civic Center BART station, along with additional service on the N Judah and 5R Fulton Rapid routes. Cabs are also available until 2 a.m. Monday on Fulton’s south side at 28th and 29th avenues or 24th and 25th avenues.
SFMTA warned that concertgoers should plan for additional travel time on the N Judah route and all bus lines serving Golden Gate Park in a press release. Increased passenger numbers and heavy traffic in the area could lengthen the trip.
While BART does not offer any direct service to Golden Gate Park, attendees can take BART and transfer to local prepaid Muni or Outside Lands transit services to get to the event, the agency said in its blog. BART continues to operate regular service until around midnight each night of the festival.
Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft can be convenient, but continually rising prices left some concertgoers stranded on the first night of the festival. Lyft prices for a ride of up to four people jumped to $180. Pick up and drop off zones are confined to the south and north sides of the park. To the south, the zones are on the north side of Irving, between 25th and 27th avenues. To the north, options include the north side of Balboa, between 30th and 31st avenues, and the west side of 30th avenue, between Balboa and Anza.
Emma Talley is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @EmmaT332
Source: www.sfchronicle.com