How much traffic did the Kansas Turnpike have on Eclipse Day 2017?

The Great American Eclipse played a large role in larger traffic and backups on the Kansas Turnpike.

Turnpike traffic spiked 11 percent on Aug. 21 compared to the same Monday a year ago, according to Kansas Turnpike Authority spokeswoman Rachel Bell.

“We had just over 115,000 vehicles on the roadway on Monday (Aug. 21),” Bell said, adding there were about 103,000 vehicles on Aug. 22, 2016, a Monday.

Bell said the traffic for that extended weekend, the Friday before the eclipse through the Tuesday after the eclipse, was up 4 percent compared to last year.

Before the eclipse, Bell said the KTA was expecting a number of travelers from Texas and Oklahoma to head north to see the eclipse in the path of totality, where a total eclipse was visible in stretches of Missouri, Nebraska and far northeastern Kansas.

“We should be able to say pretty certainly that most of that was eclipse traffic,” Bell said of the Aug. 21 traffic levels. “That’s why we wanted to compare it to the exact weekend.”

“We kind of went into it not really knowing what to expect. It was a very unique event,” she added. “We tried to communicate everything we knew in advance.”

There were also significant backups on Aug. 21 south of Emporia, particularly around a drainage project in the Flint Hills.

“Unfortunately, a lot of those customers drove in the afternoon and evening, which caused backups,” Bell said.

Bell said they had removed all the lane closures they could on the Turnpike before the surge in traffic, but that the Flint Hills closure was not one of them.

“Half of the roadway had to be removed to place those new drainage structures,” she said. “It’s not up to the point where we could have opened it.”

This story was originally published August 28, 2017 at 2:47 PM with the headline "How much traffic did the Kansas Turnpike have on Eclipse Day 2017?."