Irvine’s first-ever Fourth of July celebration was also the largest city-sponsored event ever — over 40,000 people attended the free festivities at the Great Park, including a community parade, live music, games, drone and fireworks displays and food vendors.
But that also brought with it a host of challenges like traffic jams and delayed events — raising concerns from some council members of whether or not the Great Park can handle these types of large events.
Some people experienced delays, long waits looking for parking and trouble getting in and out of the area. Traffic made some visitors late to the celebration, while others turned around before making it all the way inside.
A Bigger Turnout Than Expected
Melissa Haley, director of communications and engagement for Irvine, said the city expected and planned for about 18,000 to 25,000 attendees for the event.
Instead, she said over 40,000 people showed up at the event, more guests than any other city-sponsored event in its history.
“If you ask the 40,000 people that were in the park, they were having a great time,” Haley said in a phone interview on Monday following the event. “However, for anyone who came later in the evening, they were met with traffic on Sand Canyon, and that was due to the sheer volume [of people]. We only have a limited number of spaces that were available. We had every single parking lot in the Great Park dedicated to the Fourth of July.”
“The unintended consequences of being a victim of our own success here — we just had so much interest in an inaugural event,” she said. “That has never happened in our 54 years of incorporation.”
The drone show, Pacific Symphony concert and fireworks show were all delayed after traffic complications prevented some people and employees from getting inside the event on time.
“We’ve since heard from many community members: families who struggled to get reunited in the event, guests who waited in traffic but were ultimately turned away and not able to enter, guests who waited in traffic but were late, and employees were late for Pacific Symphony, who some may have even missed the performance altogether,” interim City Manager Sean Crumby said at the July 8 city council meeting.
The city also provided a shuttle service for visitors to park off-site at the Irvine train station and catch a free shuttle over to the Great Park.
Some people had long waits after the event as the shuttle also got stuck in traffic and was slow to transport people out of the park afterward.
Haley said the buses were supposed to run until 11 p.m. but ended up going later than that in order to shuttle everyone over to their vehicles.
“There was significant interest,” she said. “We’ve done shuttle systems before through encouraging off-site parking — never garnered this much interest. They were just impacted by the sheer interest in elevated ridership.”
Kyle Oldoerp, public information officer for the Irvine Police Department, said officers did their best to direct traffic as jams piled up.
“Our officers did not stop moving and did not stop addressing different issues,” he said in a phone interview on July 7. “We were communicating on our social media platforms in partnership with the public information office on the city side, and we were doing everything we could to accommodate our community. What it boils down to is there’s only so many roads in and so many roads out.”
Can the Great Park’s Infrastructure Handle 40,000 Visitors?
City officials and staff members said part of the reason the event was so popular was that extra visitors were attending from outside Irvine after neighboring cities canceled their Fourth of July celebrations.
“There was also regional interest that was amplified partially by cancellation of similar events in nearby cities — Anaheim, Santa Ana and Orange,” Crumby said.
“Although, as I mentioned, the turnout highlights the great events that we put out, we would recognize that having this many people brought through real-time challenges and impacts. Traffic, congestion, parking limitations, shuttle delays and vendor shortages — they all occurred on Friday night.”
City staff members said they will be able to learn a lot about what went wrong at the event in order to make improvements for next year, especially since this celebration was the first of its kind in the Great Park.
“We’re not strangers to the infrastructure out there, but this is a new event for us,” Oldoerp said, “and now we’ve learned a lot, and I can assure the community that next year we’re going to be able to take a lot of this information that we learned this year and make improvements.”
Crumby explained there are a number of infrastructure projects at the Great Park already underway or planned soon, including street alterations and expansions. He also said the city is working on permitting a new 5 freeway interchange through CalTrans to improve vehicle access to the Great Park.
But some city officials expressed concern that the Great Park simply won’t be able to handle that many people at once, even if the city makes infrastructure improvements before next year’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“From what I can see, the way the infrastructure for the Great Park is currently set up, it simply cannot handle an event that size,” Councilmember Kathleen Treseder said in a July 8 phone interview.
“I know we can always change things around with traffic control or directions, but at the end of the day, we need parking spots. My preference would be, if we’re going to have an event like this in the future, to have it elsewhere in the city where there’s multiple streets that can serve as entrances and exits, and the streets are big enough to handle the traffic, and we have the parking.”
Treseder also said the council didn’t give staff enough time to prepare for an event of this size after it was initiated by the council in late February.
Councilmember James Mai, who brought the celebration idea forward in February, agreed that the Great Park does not currently have the infrastructure to handle over 40,000 people for any event.
“It’s logistically impossible to execute without issues, many of which stem from design limitations, entry/exit challenges, and general infrastructure shortcomings,” he wrote in a statement sent to Voice of OC. “We need to prepare now and have procedures in place so the issues some have experienced, never happen again.”
He said he will be proposing a Fourth of July Celebration Task Force for a group of city staff members and representatives from the public to review this year’s celebration, identify areas for improvement and prepare for next year’s 250th anniversary event.
“If my proposal is approved by my fellow Councilmembers, we will begin seeking public representatives to serve on the Task Force, and I will be recommending that each Council district have at least one appointed representative,” he wrote.
“I believe that when residents and leadership work hand-in-hand, great things happen. With your continued feedback and participation, we will make the 250th celebration in 2026 even more impactful and truly worthy of our city and our country.”
Angelina Hicks is the Voice of OC Collegiate News Service Editor. Contact her at ahicks@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @angelinahicks13.
