Vehicle Counts Down Slightly for 79th Sturgis Rally

STURGIS, SD. – Traffic counts for the 79th annual edition of the Sturgis motorcycle rally showed a slight decrease over last year’s numbers. Down 1.2 percent for 2019.

This year, traffic totals over the 10 day period from Aug. 2-11, 2019, showed 499,654 vehicles, versus last year’s total of 505,969.

Traffic for the rally was up initially, but dipped by as much as 8.5 percent by mid-week.

The vehicle count is not a true indication of how many people attended the rally. That estimate is still being calculated.

Traffic counts at nine locations entering Sturgis for the 2019 Rally are as follows:
Friday, Aug. 2:            52,099 entering – up 5.4% from Friday last year
Saturday, Aug. 3:        59,572 entering – down -0.9% from Saturday last year
Sunday, Aug. 4:          55,551 entering – up 6.5% from Sunday last year
Monday, Aug. 5:         61,126 entering – up 2.9% from Monday last year
Tuesday, Aug. 6:        59,361 entering – down -1.5% from Tuesday last year
Wednesday, Aug. 7:   56,204 entering – down -7.3% from Wednesday last year
Thursday, Aug. 8:       51,540 entering – down -8.5% from Thursday last year (revised number)
Friday, Aug. 9:            45,369 entering – down -6.9% from Friday last year
Saturday, Aug. 10:      36,661 entering – down -2.3% from Saturday last year
Sunday, Aug. 11:        22,171 entering – up 3.6% from Sunday last year