Cirque du Soleil - glad you could enjoy a great family evening.

One has to put the "mindless stuff" aside for the positive in life. It then helps to carry on again.

Thank you for your contribution.

Jack, I think there would be more of a public benefit if $10 Million of our tax dollars were used as seed money to have Cirque de Soleil build a permanent home in SoWhat, like a venue in Las Vegas . More Life comes to SoWhat than what has been generated by the $135 Million of tax dollars so far spent, all on our way to $1.2 Billion in another 20 years.

We enjoyed this years Kooza, in fact my wife went a second time.

Is it possible to buy tickets AT the event site for the actual cost of the ticket? Looks like everyone else who's selling them wants to attach a ridiculous handling fee.

yes, the box office is open from 5-8 pm on most evenings. Saves you $8 per ticket on "handling".

I went to Cirque du Soleil on opening night (April 9) for another reason -- to see what mode of transport people used to get there. We had 3 volunteers doing counts: one at the Streetcar stop to the north, one at the Circus gate, and one at the $10 per/car parking lot adjacent to the entrance.

We monitored from 6:30 - 8:15 for an 8:00 p.m. show. We counted 2080 people attending the event; 110 arrived by Streetcar (for which they probably paid nothing); 408 cars parked at $10 per vehicle; and 98 cars parked in lots to the south at $7 per vehicle (verified by counting them after everyone was in the tent).

I was doing counts at the $10 lot and the average vehicle occupancy was above 2, probably about 2.2. If the $7 vehicles had similar vehicle occupancy then we can estimate that at least 1,113 customers arrived by car and were willing to pay a lot to park, while most others drove but parked farther away at lower rates (as I did that evening by parking near the tram and paying about $1.25 to park on the street).

So the streetcar managed to garner just 5.3% of mode share even when giving the service away, while most others drove, and 49% of the total paid $7 or more to park on site.

Local train advocates constantly whine that autos are so popular because driving and parking are both "subsidized", but I think this event pretty much proves that no matter how much you punish motorists with high prices and subsidize trains, you can't get people to use something that is simply irrelevant.

John Charles
Cascade Policy

Gosh John, PDOT's traffic planning guru for SoWhat Matt Brown stated numerous times in all kinds of hearings, committee meetings, at Council, at PDC, at METRO, anywhere, that SoWhat would have ridership of 40% mass transit.

Here you have an event that one would think mass transit would be the logical answer because; 1) a time-certain event usually causes traffic problems encouraging transit use; 2) SoWhat is almost impossible to find and to get to by vehicle so transit makes sense; 3)transit is essentially free here since no fare inspectors; 4) the 8:00PM time allows for mass transit users to accommodate the extra time needed to use mass transit; 5) and Cirque de Soleil encourages transit usage in advertising, etc.. But here we have only 5.3% vs 40% transit usage. 94.7 % are arriving by vehicles.

Matt was wrong, but he's left town working for Homer taking his song and dance to LALA and Tucson.