E
ach July, the Cheyenne Frontier Days celebration
attracts people from all 50 states and nearly two
dozen countries. It’s billed as the world’s largest
outdoor rodeo and western celebration, attracting as many
as 40,000 people a day.
And that’s caused some concerns in recent years.
Fans leaving evening concerts sometimes waited an hour
for shuttle buses that would transport them to off-site
parking. Traffic congestion around the festival grounds
tested the patience of drivers, pedestrians, and area
residents. Law enforcement and volunteers had to spend
excessive time in the streets directing traffic, sometimes
under less than optimal conditions.
That’s what led the Cheyenne Metropolitan Planning
Organization (MPO) to hire Ayres Associates to conduct
a traffic study during the 2017 festival and provide
recommendations on how to improve traffic patterns,
increase safety, and more efficiently move cars, trucks,
buses, and pedestrians to and from the event grounds.
Many of those recommendations were implemented for
the 2018 celebration. The result?
“Wednesday, July 24, was our most crowded night, with
a sold-out concert,” said Cheyenne Frontier Days Security
Committee Chair Buck Reisner. “That’s 22,500 people,
plus all the people who were on the grounds and not at
the concert. At the end of the night we were able to clear
the park itself in an hour and 10 minutes. In the past that
would have taken at least two hours.”
Tom Mason is the director of the Cheyenne MPO, the
source of the funding for the study. The celebration’s main
attractions will always result in a mass of people trying to
move into or out of the park at one time, he said.
“Each day there are two main events, a rodeo
in the early afternoon and night shows of musical
entertainment,” Mason said. “So every day when the
rodeo is over, you have a flood of people leaving, then
a couple of hours later, a flood of people coming in, and
then late night there’s a flood of people all wanting to
leave at the same time. And that led to conflicts.”
The 83-acre festival site also poses challenges,
according to John Davis, Ayres’ traffic engineering
supervisor.
“The site is unusual,” he said. “There is a residential
neighborhood on one side. People park in that area on the
streets, and that can lead to traffic safety concerns. On the
west side of the grounds is Interstate 25, and on another
side, Lions Park. There’s not a lot of room for parking on
the site, and the festival attracts very large crowds.”
AyresAssociates.com
│3