The South Dakota Department of Transportation has posted its traffic counts for vehicles entering Sturgis during the 75th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally which occupied the Black Hills last week. The numbers beat last year by 30%, but they did not set a record:
At 510,749, this year’s rally traffic was the highest in ten years. However, it did not exceed the historical record of 604,441 set during the 60th Rally in 2000, nor the 528,676 vehicle entries counted in 1990 during the 50th Rally.
So how do these traffic numbers translate into headcount? One would think that the vehicle count must include a lot of multi-passenger vehicles (including all those biker couples sharing a ride), so the multiplication factor is surely much larger than 1.0. But when I look at past rally stats posted on the official Sturgis website, I find from 2000 on, headcount exceeds the SDDOT traffic count by a lowly ratio of only 1.038. If that average ratio holds for this year, a traffic count of 510,749 would translate to a headcount of 530,000, less than the headcount Sturgis.com lists for the 60th Rally.
headcount
head-on
headache
head cheese.
If it is a wingnut counting traffic,they prolly either count women as a half or not at all.
I believe there were a lot more here than the traffic counters will ever show because we had a lot of bikers throughout the Black Hills starting two weeks prior to the official start date. Sturgis shut down Main street to all but motorcycles several days early. I think the stretch from Junction to 4th street (and maybe 5th street) along with 1st thru 4th streets between Main and Lazelle were bike parking only on July 30th.
Many of the riders have been coming for years and decided to be here early and leave early so the could ride without being in the expected gridlock. My neighbor rented his house to a group for the full week before the rally and I noted Custer, Hill City, and other hills towns had lots of bikes prior to the start.
Were there a million here? Maybe if you count the two weeks prior and a week after.
It used to be that I would always see the greatest number of bikers going to Sturgis on the weekend before the rally. Now the weekend before the rally is when I see a lot of bikers coming back. The weeks before the rally are big for people going out now. It might just be a response to the logistics of lodging and actually visiting sites in the Hills.
you poor bastards.
how about cooke city MT and all points between?
take that rohr
Does the traffic count include all the motorhomes pulling trailers with the motorcycles inside. Thirty years ago bikers rode their motorcycles to Sturgis, now they pull them in trailers.
If the Sturgis Rally had 17 fatalities in one day it would make the national news, spread those 17 deaths over a ten day or two period and it is hardly news at all.
And that isn’t even talking about injuries.
Traffic counts definitely didn’t capture the pre-rally crowd. I went up Thursday of the rally week and it was pretty packed, but not more than any other year. However, talking with hospital execs, the rally has spread to the rally has spread to the Southern Hills – even down to Hot Springs.
I’d believe there were over a million bikers over the 3 week period, but a lot of them left early. I don’t know how many skipped the traffic counters, though; my group skipped the main street crawl.