By Dar Danielson (Radio Iowa)

The Iowa State Fair is making some changes to try and improve the traffic flow for the one million or so people who visit every year.

State Fair CEO Jeremy Parsons says one big change will make it easier to park. “We’ll be creating a new entrance into our parking lot at East University Avenue and East 38th Street. So there’ll be a third way for fair goers to come into our parking lot,” Parsons says.

He says there will also be a change in the service where you can park and ride a bus to the Fairgrounds. They are dropping the park and ride service at Southeast Polk High School for another location. “The fair will be providing a free shuttle service to the Iowa State Fair every day from South Ridge Mall. So we literally to go in a different direction from the east side to the south side, but this service will be completely free provided by the fair,” Parsons says.

Parsons says this was brought on when Pleasant Hill dropped the bus service that serves the Des Moines metro area. Parson says these services are very popular.  “Last year, roughly 270,000 of our fairgoers arrived at the Fair via our three park and ride locations,” he says. “And so even though we’ll be switching from Southeast Polk to Southridge Mall, we assume that number will remain about the same.”

Parson says. Long lines of traffic can build on the busy days of the State Fair and Parsons says they are looking at other ways to make it easier to get in and out. “Right now we are involved in a traffic study with the city of Des Moines on University Avenue to the north and Dean Avenue to the south, just making sure that we are doing all we can to keep that fair traffic moving,” Parsons says. He says they feel adding the third entrance will help ease some of the congestions.

The third entrance will cost around $1.5 million.