There’s a lot of moving parts when organizing an event the magnitude of Langley Good Times Cruise-In.
It literally attracts tens of thousands of spectators, plus more than a thousand custom, classic, and vintage car owners for a one-day annual charity car show on the downtown streets of Aldergrove.
A team of volunteers has been working for months organizing car registrations, arranging food vendors, lining up entertainment, recruiting volunteers, ordering branded Cruise-In merchandise, coordinating the Sunday swap meet and car corral, and promoting the show – overall.
But one of the largest tasks of all – which has to be arranged in minute detail and involves approvals from multiple levels of government – is literally the comings and goings for this year’s car show on Saturday, Sept. 10.
Cruise-In president Riccardo Sestito and director Holly Trytko have been among the team working to pull this all together.
One of the biggest hiccups last year was traffic flow, Sestito admitted.
Therefore, he said, this year several changes were made to help ease the flow of people and cars getting in and out of the show.
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Once again Fraser Highway will be closed from 264th to 272nd Streets for the full day, with downtown traffic being detoured north on 32nd Avenue or south along 29th Avenue, and truck traffic being moved to 16th Avenue.
By shutting down the traffic lights at these main intersections, traffic control people will take over responsibility for directing motorists and preventing some of the bottle necks that arose in past, explained Trytko, who started in the industry as a traffic control person 17 years ago and now works as a planner for Triumph Traffic.
She’s been part of Cruise-In for the past six years, and explained that most of her duties happen months ahead of the show: getting necessary road closure permissions, arranging for traffic detours, and connecting with agencies such as TransLink and Coast Mountain to reroute buses.
While Trytko is organizing the flow of traffic, Sestito and others on the Cruise-In board are still working out the kinks for this year’s event parking.
Aldergrove Community Secondary’s parking lot will again serve as the early-morning staging area for registered cars – where they marshall before being moved into place along the main drag. When they’re all cleared out about 10 to 10:30 a.m., Sestito said that parking lot will be turned over to the school. They will then allow public parking by donation to the school’s dry grad effort.
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Public parking is also being coordinated at Betty Gilbert Elementary.
Not yet confirmed, Sestito is trying to arrange handicap parking at the Royal Canadian Legion, vendor and merchant parking at Phil Jackman Park, and he’s still waiting for confirmation about more possible by-donation public parking at the church on the corner of 272nd Street and 32nd Avenue.
Otherwise, he said, spectators are expected to fill up much of the on-street parking around the core, but he advises motorists to abide by the signs to prevent being towed.
“There’s still a few bugs to iron out, but I think we’ve managed to address some of the key concerns that came up last year,” Sestito said, noting he’s still trying to find a charity that can offer shuttle service in and out of the site as a fundraiser.
Watch for more about Langley Good Times Cruise-In here, or on the car show website.
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