Coachella 2025: Sen. Bernie Sanders makes surprise appearance at fest
Sen. Bernie Sanders made a surprise appearance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Saturday night, urging political action.
The company that puts on the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival publicly apologized this week for traffic issues that left campers waiting in their cars for hours on Weekend 1 and promised fixes will be in place before Weekend 2 starts Friday.
George Cunningham, senior vice president of public safety with Goldenvoice, explained the dilemma — and the steps being taken to address it — while speaking to the La Quinta City Council Tuesday.
His appearance came after car campers described massive traffic wait times, upwards of 12 hours, getting into the Empire Polo Club on April 10, as massive lines of cars backed up surrounding roads, particularly Monroe and Madison streets.
Cunningham told the council that the lengthy backups were partially caused by the early arrival of campers on Thursday morning “not ever letting up” throughout the day.
“Every year, we typically have a lull (on Thursday) between 1:00 and 6:00 in the evening, where it just dies down,” Cunningham said. “We didn’t have that. Everybody wanted to come early.”
Cunningham said the festival’s first Thursday night performance, with DJ Chris Lake delivering a set on the campgrounds, caused people to come earlier than usual. He noted that by 4:30 p.m. Thursday this year, the festival had 6,300 campers parked in the festival grounds, while on a typical year, the festival wouldn’t see that many campers until hours later Thursday.
The festival also dealt with what Cunningham described as “staffing challenges” and couldn’t fully staff its 32 tolling stations used for car security screening Thursday morning.
“We had six tolls that were down,” Cunningham said. “We have addressed that. We have plans if the entity, the partner that we work with that staffs those, is unable to meet it at that shift time, we already have a secondary plan in place to be able to augment that and have that staffed with other individuals.”
For Coachella Weekend 2 and Stagecoach, an upcoming country festival the event company also runs, Goldenvoice organizers are also adding 12 more tollbooths for security checks at Lot 2A near Madison Street and Avenue 50, according to Cunningham.
“We’re going to get (the vehicles) off the streets, and we’re going to get them in lots so we can lessen the impact on the community,” Cunningham said.
“Am I guaranteeing that there is not going to be 100% no impact? No, I can’t give you that guarantee, but I can give you a guarantee that the impact will be many times less than you witnessed this past Thursday,” he added.
Cunningham said the plan will be reviewed and potentially altered heading into the Stagecoach country music festival — slated for April 25-27 at the same venue — if things “are not to the standard that we need them to be.”
Council member criticizes ‘unacceptable’ traffic issues, lack of bathrooms
The traffic issues drew the particular ire of Councilmember Kathleen Fitzpatrick, who lives near the Empire Polo Club. (The festival grounds are located in Indio but border La Quinta to the south and west.)
“I live right there, and I’ve lived there for 19 years,” Fitzpatrick said at the meeting. “Thursday was unacceptable.”
“It was unacceptable because 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,” she added. “It’s a total embarrassment.”
Fitzpatrick said she heard from residents in her area “calling me and 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?” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s one thing to say we’re having a wonderful festival (and) 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.”
Cunningham replied by saying festival organizers care strongly about Coachella’s impact on the surrounding community.
Mayor Pro Tem Deborah McGarrey asked Cunningham how traffic updates are shared with festivalgoers before their arrival, and she noted that traffic was still backed up along Avenue 54 around 9 p.m. Thursday last week.
Mayor Linda Evans said that traffic seemed to go more smoothly the rest of the weekend, and she pointed to “Wind-chella” in 2018, when high winds delayed the campground’s opening, as an example of a past hurdle that was overcome.
“I think a few years go by really smoothly, and then something occurs,” Evans said. “This year, it’s the add of a big performer in the campground area, so it’s a new flex that people weren’t used to, combined with the situation and the concerns and the issues that occurred.”
Tom Coulter covers the cities of Palm Desert, La Quinta, Rancho Mirage and Indian Wells. Reach him at [email protected].
