'Unacceptable': Coachella Apologizes For Traffic Chaos During Heat Wave

LA QUINTA, CA — A representative from Goldenvoice has apologized for the long and chaotic vehicle lines that snarled traffic in the Indio and La Quinta area for hours during the first weekend of Coachella, angering residents and concert-goers alike.

Those arriving early on Thursday, April 10, to camp at the festival faced hours-long vehicle lines in blistering desert heat with no access to restrooms, forcing some ticket-holders to use the public roadside. Some reported waiting in their cars for more than 12 hours.

At a La Quinta City Council meeting on Tuesday, Goldenvoice Senior Vice President of Public Safety George Cunningham addressed the debacle.

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"Again, [we] apologize for what took place to your residents, the impact that it had to the community," Cunningham told the council. "Not giving an excuse or a reason for why that took place."

La Quinta Councilwoman Kathleen Fitzpatrick, who has lived near the festival grounds for 19 years, said she was "very impacted."

"Thursday was unacceptable," she said, speaking directly to Cunningham.

"I find it reprehensible to invite all of these people into our community and then have no place for them to use facilities for restrooms, no place to get water, and it's an embarrassment — it's a total embarassment."

Cunningham said that while Goldenvoice had made numerous logistical improvements this year, organizers failed to anticipate the volume and consistency of early arrivals to the campgrounds.

“We made some changes and we did a lot of planning to make it an even better festival,” he said. “The symbiotic challenge that we had, that we inadvertently oversaw, was the early arrival of campers that we've always had coming into the festival site, not ever letting up. Every year, we typically have a lull between one o'clock and six o'clock in the evening where it just dies down — we didn't have that.”

"Everybody wanted to come early," he said.

For comparison, at 4:30 on Thursday, the festival counted 6,300 campers parked in the festival campgrounds. During most years, that number doesn't materialize until about 6:30 or 7:30 p.m., Cunningham said.

He added that demand to attend Coachella remains high compared to other U.S. music festivals, and that the company has worked to sustain that enthusiasm despite challenges that continue to bedevil the music industry.

“We kick off the music festival industry, and we set the standard,” Cunningham said. “We have people not from all over the country that come to this festival, but all over the world to see what we do.”

This weekend, Cunningham says the festival is expecting to process about 12,000 vehicles for the campgrounds alone. Goldenvoice plans to add a dozen new toll booths for Weekend 2 to help alleviate traffic backups, bringing the total number of entry points for campers to 44.

The plan will be reviewed and altered accordingly for the Stagecoach music festival at the end of the month, he added.

Frustrated campers took to social media last Thursday, urging Goldenvoice and local officials to fix the gridlock. Some even compared the experience to the infamous Fyre Festival.

coachella camping entry line is unconscionable tbh. fyre fest 2
(still in line to get in. 4 hours so far)
— Mystery Ad Exec (@MysteryAdExec) April" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/MysteryAdE... 11, 2025

"I felt so bad for them," Fitzpatrick said at Tuesday's meeting. "And then, I felt bad for the residents who live in my area, who were then calling me and then telling me about — which I had already seen — the human waste on the side of the street where people were forced to toilet. How do you reconcile that in our city?"

"It's one thing to say we're having a wonderful festival, we're the leaders in the field, but it's another thing to say, we don't really give a crap about the city of La Quinta — because that's what it looked like."

The gates for campers open at 9 a.m. on Thursday. Festival promoters are still encouraging attendees to plan accordingly.