GoI70

If you are still up in the Colorado mountains Monday morning, July 5th, you can expect very heavy traffic on your way back to the Denver metro area. This year’s 4th of July holiday travelers were late to start heading west and, it appears they will be coming home Monday. The usual Sunday eastbound traffic jam never developed this year; indeed the highway ran smoothly all day.

Since plenty of folks made the trip west Friday and Saturday, it is a fair bet that the traffic patterns we predicted for Sunday will appear on Monday afternoon. What goes up, will come down.

Obviously we missed the call about the Sunday eastbound traffic. The Monday official holiday seems to be almost universally honored this year. We weren’t expecting this. Indeed travelers seemed to have take a more laid back approach to their outings this 4th. They started out later on Friday than in any recent year . I-70 was jammed Saturday as well which is something we had not seen in previous data. Still, the fundamentals are simple – lots of folks went west Friday and Saturday and most of them will be heading back Monday.

So if you want to avoid the heavy delays eastbound, your best bet is to leave before 10 or after 7 or perhaps later. Keep an eye on the highway from your phone on the GoI70/mobile site http://goI70.com/mobile. We’ll be carrying up to the minute information about highway conditions, traffic cams and travel times.  Have a safe trip.