City Warns Of Lollapalooza Traffic Impacts This Weekend
Lollapalooza is back in town bringing in lots of live music acts and entertainment and creating a lot of traffic in its wake.
The City of Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communication (OEMC), the department responsible for overseeing Traffic Management, is warning drivers to avoid the areas adjacent to Grant Park where the annual cool, mega-hipster concert festival is taking place this weekend.
In an OEMC media advisory, the department is urging “the public to be aware of traffic disruptions and increased crowds in the area.”
Essentially, all the streets between Michigan Ave. and the lake, and Roosevelt to Monroe to be closed. But this means the impacted area will be much far reaching most likely causing traffic backups for blocks. The city is expecting a big turnout in excess of 100,000 attendees each day, which means increased pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic.
The best advice is to avoid the area.
If you’re coming to the event take public transportation if possible or find a reasonably priced parking garage and hike or cab it over to Grant Park.
Do we really need to have “Drunkapalooza” in Grant Park every year, considering
(1) The damage it does to Grant Park. While admittedly the organizers pay to fix the damage every year, don’t Chicago citizens deserve to have Grant Park looking its best all summer long? Last year it took over 2 months, until mid-October, to fix the damage:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/7663297-418/lollapalooza-clean-up-at-grant-park-expected-to-be-done-in-about-a-month.html
(2) The possibility to relocate the event elsewhere, say to Northerly Island, where it might result in less traffic and noise problems for the surrounding area.
I’d relocate the event to say – Wisconsin.
Its the middle of a big city. Big cities have events. Get over it.
Pete:
No problem with big events, especially those that generate lots of tax dollars. Just seems to make sense to locate these things where it does less damage to Grant Park, and causes fewer traffic/noise problems.
Hell yeah!
Actually, my family and I left Chicago to go to Wisconsin this weekend, in part, to avoid Lollapalooza.
Take a look at Grant Park after last weekend. It looks like a muddy mess, with giant mud puddles everywhere (especially in the south end near the softball fields). Grant Park is the city’s front lawn. No reason to keep destroying it every year, and leaving it looking like crap for months. Simply put, Lollapalooza is not an appropriate use for Grant Park. Would the park District allow tractor pulls at Soldier Field, leaving the turf ripped to shreds? Northerly Island has 90 acres of space that (properly configured) could host most or all of the Lollapalooza music events.