Waller seeks to ease Renaissance Festival traffic woes
With every year, the Texas Renaissance Festival draws an increasingly larger crowd, eager to chow down on kettle corn, survey the costumes and watch knights joust.
But with that crowd comes something less desirable: traffic.
Waller County commissioners this week discussed methods for keeping the flow of festival-goers out of neighborhood streets and moving along major thoroughfares.
Among ideas the county plans to pursue are residentonly vehicle stickers, which will allow only those who live on certain streets access to the neighborhood roads.
The county also intends to have more officers directing traffic, paid for by the festival, as well as additional signage.
Traffic otherwise could be a “nightmare” for those who lived there, one resident said at Wednesday’s commissioners court meeting.
County Judge Trey Duhon said some residents had to sit in traffic for several hours just to reach their homes — a problem both for residents and emergency vehicle access.
“It was horrible last year,” Duhon said in an interview Thursday. “The public safety issue is really the bigger thing we’re worried about.”
County commissioners hope the measures will help address the issue around the festival, which has been running since the 1970s.
“We have to start somewhere,” Commissioner Jeron Barnett said at Wednesday’s meeting.
Once they are ordered and printed, Duhon said, he expects the stickers to be available at the county courthouse and Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace. Residents can also contact the Precinct 2 constable, he said.
The 2017 festival is scheduled to begin Sept. 30. It will run every Saturday and Sunday through Nov. 26, in addition to opening the day after Thanksgiving, Friday, Nov. 24.