Quit Ultra Day 2: Better organized, always frustrating

The second evening of the first Ultra Music Festival event in Virginia Key was closed with a more organized approach to moving more than 50,000 people from the island.

The organization does not necessarily mean that everyone went faster. Some people reported waiting one to two hours before boarding a bus to three transit centers on the Miami mainland: the Vizcaya Gardens, the AmericanAirlines Arena and the former Miami Herald site. Some have returned more quickly to their rented rooms. Others have experienced a less dramatic but equally long wait before getting on a bus.

The festival organizers insisted on providing more buses earlier, reorganized the traffic lanes to create a better flow of cars and buses along the Rickenbacker causeway and forced people to queue up. inside the festival gates, unlike the disorganized rush of people in front of the outs the first night.

"I think the bus situation is much better tonight," said Casey Almstead, of Orlando. She waited less than an hour to get on a bus around 1:30 am. "It's better because they line up people inside the festival."

The adjustments were the most profitable for people who left the festival early. A large fleet of buses lined up on two lanes before midnight, and festival staff prevented visitors from overflowing into the street. Once the main performances of the festival ended at 2 am, the doors filled with people eager to go out. A marked difference from the first night: staff counted people when they were driven out of gates and on buses.

This process, while preventing people from making their way to the bus doors, was always taking time and depending on how quickly the bus fleet could disembark and get back to Virginia Key.

The logistical challenge of orderly moving tens of thousands of people from Virginia Key after a one-day music festival involved a complicated collaboration between festival organizers, numerous police departments and, ultimately, people tired to whom we asked to be patient while they waited. online.

Some spectators greeted the new structure but found it frustrating to wait more than an hour before being able to catch a train. Many echoed the first year of the festival in Virginia Key after the city brought Ultra back from its longtime home on the waterfront in downtown Miami.

"Let's do what we can to get @ultra Back at Bayfront Park, people are really missing, "tweeted the user @VictorGimme. "Virginia Keys is not going to cut it. They know it, we know it. I just returned to my room, at 5:32, I left at 1:30.

The authorities also adjusted the taxiways so that those wishing to return to the mainland via the William Powell Bridge could stay on the two westbound lanes of the Rickenbacker Causeway and not have to cross. People had more room to walk.

But once in the west of the bridge, there was some frustration. People were driven on buses to a new stop. Without a door to force people to line up, the scene sometimes resembled the chaos of the first night.

Ultra has also extended its activities beyond 2 am to encourage people to move away from the event. Food vendors and water points stayed open longer and some artists performed late in the morning.

The extra music may have exacerbated a new problem, beyond the complications of removing the key. The resounding sound of Ultra – one of the main reasons why downtown residents urged Miami commissioners to expel the Bayfront Park festival – angered the continent's residents who complained about social media for hearing the electronic dance music from Virginia Key.

"The position of the extreme decibels over Biscayne Bay has extended the noise pollution that was previously blocked by buildings in downtown Miami to many neighborhoods," tweeted John Morales, weather forecaster for NBC 6. "Nobody sleeps well, we all have headaches. "