Despite Chicago city officials’ efforts to reduce Mexican Independence Day car caravans this year, the annual festivities prompted the city to implement sudden road closures downtown Saturday evening. Many residents spent hours trying to get home.
“(It was) an epic failure like I have never seen in this city. Not Nascar, (n)ot Lollapalooza, (n)ot anything compared to how poorly this was handled,” Aaron Thompson, a 46-year-old River North resident, wrote to Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, Sunday morning.
The Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications implemented rolling street closures and restricted access to downtown beginning at approximately 8 p.m. to “alleviate traffic congestion,” according to OEMC’s account on the social platform X.
After spending hours on the road, Thompson was denied access to his residential street and rerouted several times.
Another Chicago resident, Gregg Roloff, tweeted that he was forced to sleep in his car in the western suburbs Saturday night after sitting in hours of traffic and being denied entry to the city at multiple points.
This comes after city officials hoped to deter caravans this year by sanctioning the El Grito festival in Grant Park for the first time in over a decade.
However, last night Thompson said the problem was not the caravanners, it was the police.
“They treated residents of the city like garbage, like we didn’t belong,” he told the Tribune. In a sea of dozens of congested cars, he said he only saw a handful decorated for the holiday.
The emergency management office and police countered that the city announced possible street closures and access points for those living and working within the closures area, citing X posts from Wednesday and Friday.
Streets were reopened shortly after 2 a.m. Sunday and public transit was not affected. But on Sunday evening, OEMC announced another set of street closures restricting access from DuSable Lake Shore Drive to Halsted Street and from Division Street to 18th Street. Residents of the affected area would be allowed to pass through access points, the agency said on X.
Mexican Independence Day festivities continue through Monday evening, making more festivity-related traffic impacts possible.
