Soccer doubleheader = super traffic

So, did you hear about the soccer doubleheader at Reliant Stadium last night? We'll bet you did if you were trying to drive anywhere near the stadium — according to reports, the 75,000 fans who packed Reliant to see the Houston Dynamo, Los Angeles Galaxy, FC Barcelona and Mexico's Club América caused a world-class traffic jam.

The first game kicked off at 7 p.m., and though the Chronicle reported HPD spokesman Alvin Wright said traffic had pretty much died down by then, the word from the street was different: At 8:26 p.m., a police dispatcher told officers that the South Loop at Kirby was so crowded that drivers were "turning around and driving the other way" on the freeway. Even so, it was no big deal, Wright said: "There were a lot of drivers anxious and excited about getting into the stadium, so we saw some creative driving out there," he said. "Our guys are used to that kind of stuff."

Metro spokeswoman Raequel Roberts got stuck in the traffic on her way home from work, and she said Metro was on the job with crowd control. "We will put on double trains as needed, and we will be monitoring the load situation. We have cameras on all the platforms and we do have extra police out to make sure the situation goes smoothly, which we often do for large-scale events like this," she told the Chronicle. We imagine the double trains really made all those drivers on the South Loop feel better.

Wright noted that the traffic snarls should be a reminder for Texans fans headed to Reliant to watch the team open the season against the Chiefs on Saturday night. "The main thing is to leave early enough to bypass all those traffic problems," Wright said. Or take MetroRail.