DENVER (KDVR) — Both air and road travel are about to heat up around Colorado for the unofficial beginning of summer.
According to AAA, this weekend could be the third busiest Memorial Day since 2000, with 42 million Americans expected to travel. That is up 7% from last year.
Air travel is already up. TSA said May 22 was its busiest day since February 2020 with more than 2.6 million passengers screened.
With its parks and outdoor offerings, a lot of that traffic comes to Colorado.
Locally, Memorial Day is Denver International Airport’s busiest time of the year. According to a release, DIA officials forecast over 400,000 travelers to walk through the airport’s checkpoints from Thursday, May 25 through Tuesday, May 30. On Thursday, Friday and Monday alone, there will be 70,000 travelers checking through security, which is 9.4% more than in 2022.
Air travel isn’t the only place travelers should expect traffic.
The Colorado Department of Transportation is suspending all construction and maintenance projects from Friday to Tuesday in anticipation of heavy traffic along the Front Range and mountain highways, especially on westbound Interstate 70 on Friday and Saturday, and eastbound I-70 from Eagle County to the Denver area on Memorial Day.
If road traffic increases as much as air traffic, there will be close to 200,000 people traveling through the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel from Friday through Monday. Last year, there were 152,903.