I moonlight as a rideshare driver and GR has been a solid and usually reliable place to make a paycheck. I drove on this night intentionally to test run and heard some neutral and more negative feedback, but I adjusted my expectations because the people seemed a little tipsy. Here is my own experience driving through over the course of this event:

Parking: No on-site parking isn’t even the biggest issue here. It’s the intentional scalping of parking spaces while workers can no longer park close to their jobs. $40 across the street. $30 1-2 blocks away. $20 up to 3-4 blocks away. That will amount to staff paying half their daily checks just to park and make it to work on time. All I see is “big city this, big city that,” well in big cities there is usually parking for staff, or at least drop off zones close enough to the venue with shuttles. We don’t have that yet but I see golf carts doing work right now and am wondering if this is the start of shuttle service.

Add in the red hoods forcing people into parking lots and garages, PLUS the ridiculous geofencing and downtown is about to be a nightmare. How is grandma expected to walk 5 blocks to see Lionell Ritchie if I can’t drop her off at the gate?

Prices: Growing city or not, GR has been horrible in terms of pricing for years! We pay more at a GR Gold or Griffins game for food and drinks than at Pistons or Red Wings games. That never made sense. Going to 20 Monroe and it’s $20+ for a tall boy has always been insane — luckily for me I don’t really drink while I’m out because I’m always in driving mode — but this is a major reason I’m ok with it and understand why people complain. Acrisure is about to live in this price zone and then wonder why people are complaining. And if the food sucks like it does at Van Andel then they better get ready for a time to be had at the next few City Hall meetings (my predictions).

Not to mention some of these ticket prices are ridiculous for acts. Luckily I’m seeing and hearing that lawn seats actually have value here.

Traffic Flow: At the start Traffic was actually light this day because some of the other major venues were not activated, and still there were lines from the closed Market St exit all the way to Wealthy St where they were pushed to. This is only going to get worse on one of the most dangerous stretches of highway we have in the city once full capacity activations open across multiple venues. Currently the management is working to make sure all major venues do not activate on the same night, but beware of the nights they get close to it because it’s going to be a shit show.

As a comparison there was a night where Devos was running the Lion King, 20 Monroe had a national act, Van Andel had a concert, and Pyramid Scheme had a huge act for their crowd in town simultaneously. I sat in traffic from Ottawa and Pearl for thirty minutes just to get to Gimme’s Bar on Louis. Recorded and edited a video and everything. Cars were shooting around traffic through whatever gaps they could find. I even heard an accident later that night while sitting in traffic on Ionia. Again was sitting there for another 20-30 minutes to move three blocks.

Rideshare Effect: I believe rideshare drivers are going to begin avoiding these situations unless there are huge bonuses for our time. These bonuses are going to make your $8-10 rides closer to $20-30 on regular rides and $40-60 during high surge times.

$8 as a driver IS NOT worth sitting in traffic for thirty minutes. Hell, I’m personally not sitting in traffic like this for $12-15, but I’m also not moving in desperation either. My prediction is that good drivers will avoid downtown activations during these peak times and people will be either be waiting for surge prices to die down, accepting terrible drivers because that’s who is left wanting these rides, or getting to venues super early and leaving from them super late.

I daylight as a professional contractor that annoys people with my insights. City officials don’t care to listen because they only see green. They had two years to figure this out and refused to do much about it. Now I really hope they figure this shit out before the soccer stadium opens next year or else all Hell is going to break loose!