You can depend on a few things every year here in Summit: sunny days on the shores of Lake Dillon, cool nights under the stars at a campfire, and bumper-to-bumper weekends on I-70.
July is historically the busiest for I-70 traffic. Winter might feel crazier because of snow and spinoffs, but mid-summer weekends bring more cars to the Eisenhower-Johnson tunnels.
This year July hit a recent high mark with 592,488 cars in 12 days, weekends only. That’s an average of nearly 4,115 cars every hour – the busiest on I-70 in five years.
This year is just barely busier than July 2023 with 592,320. Flat to miniscule growth has been the trend on I-70 for most of this year.
But how does this summer compare to other recent highs?
Krystal 93 dug into the tunnel numbers from CDOT:
- July 2019… 615,433
- July 2024… 592,488
- July 2023… 592,320
- July 2022… 570,716
- July 2021… 566,976
- July 2020… 550,280