With officials from International Speedway Corporation fueling an increasingly noisy debate about whether or not NASCAR should land in Kitsap County, residents from throughout the region are finding themselves at ends over being on the right or wrong path in terms of development.
The bottom line question is: Does the proposed race track fit in with our image of Kitsap as a county? We say no.
Does anyone move to an area because it has NASCAR? We can’t imagine why and we don’t want Kitsap to become a “nice to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there†kind of place.
ISC is doing a tough sell on this and while we’d all like to think they just really, really like us, let’s not be fooled that the company’s bottom line is making money.
Should that be the impetus driving Kitsap as well?
Traffic, which is already tied up in knots, will get a Band-Aid fix to assure that NASCAR fans — many of whom would crawl six miles over broken glass and swim a saline river to see Richard Petty’s sunglasses — can get to the race.
Whether or not they’ll be able to do so on time is another matter.
The infrastructure here is already maxxed and given the regions in which ISC now operates its speedways — California, Chicagoland, Darlington, Daytona, Miami, Kansas and so on — we’re fairly certain that none are located on a peninsula that can best be accessed from the west via ferries and/or a bridge.
Kitsap’s biggest north/south thoroughfare, Highway 3, which bottlenecks routinely, is wholly inadequate for the load of traffic it would have to bear. One can only imagine the backups as a good portion of it is two lanes — something which North Kitsap motorists are all too familiar with.
On that note, just because ISC doesn’t think there will be much impact on ferry traffic doesn’t make it so. Thousands heading west to the proposed track are going to take a “scenic†ferry ride only to find that thousands of others had the same idea.
We all know how packed a ferry can be for Seattle sporting events, and the vast majority of those riders are walk-ons. Imagine, if you will, that foot traffic as vehicle traffic, multiplied several times and heading in our direction on an already busy summer weekend.
No adverse impacts on North Kitsap? Give us a break.
