mrad,
trying to get up to 10,000 people in and out of Site on tiny little Pin Oak road is a logistics nightmare. Even if that many people drove to somewhere close to Stack, the road would be so beaten to hell that getting out would probably be even worse. If you paid attention to how rough it was Saturday night, keep in mind that it was nearly freshly graded when i traversed it at around 2pm.
Driving slow is something that is very very stressed to crews and visitors that come to Cut and Stack, but is something that would more than likely fall apart when thousands of people are driving that road in the dark that haven't ever been down it before. I hate being the advocate of hard paving a gravel road, mainly because I like them so much, but unless the road maintains it's integrety around the corners and on the hills, parking that many people close is just simply not possible.
Past that, the cars would have to find a place to be! Student Bonfire does not own the land that Bonfire is burned on. It is by generousity of the landowner that any of the last 3 Bonfire have been possible. Not all of the neighbors think it's the greatest thing in the world, but as long as SB doesn't intrude on their personal property they can't say much about what is done on a piece of land they don't own. The closest, most suitable plot of land that was available for parking was that shuttle lot across from the church. The man takes one last cut of coastal and then the whole field gets trampled one night in November... that has the potential to be a lot of work for him to be able to keep his bale count up.
There are people that are diehard advocates of Bonfire returning to campus. There are people that unconditionally believe that a return to campus would be the end of Bonfire. Either way, the only two ways to accomodate the nearly unpredictably growing numbers are 1) to pave Pin Oak for the amount of traffic that it would have to handle for that one night each year, but not knowing how long Bonfire will be down that road makes that a pretty big gamble for Robertson County, and/or 2) move Site closer to 6, or even FM 2549 or some other paved road. At the same time a Site closer to B/CS might as well be sought. The Reds in 2006 (and I'm sure plenty of others did, too, but '06 was when I was there beside them) went through way way too many long days and nights, cigarettes, girlfriends, and tanks of gasoline trying to find the best available site to Burn. The site they found had to be cleared and leveled before Stack could start.
in short, parking and busses are not something that were just thrown together. Believe it or not, but the whole system has been greatly improved over the last couple of years, but, and I speculate it is due to the recent news from Maurano, attendance seemed to jump a little this year. It is simply a matter of trying to move too many people, too quickly down a road that wasn't made for it.