UPDATE: FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 2017:
The second weekend of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival kicked off today, with the desert's annual music celebration expected to pack both the Empire Polo Grounds and Inland Empire freeways. As with Coachella, Weekend Two is pretty much a carbon copy of Weekend One. This was our story last week, and we're stickin' with it this week.
The 2017 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival - which opens it's first of two weekends tomorrow - has always provided increased traffic volumes on Inland Empire freeways. But this year, Coachella will accommodate crowds that are 25 percent bigger than in years past, and that could put extra pressure on Interstate 10 and other freeways that will carry traffic through the IE toward Indio. KVCR's Ken Vincent has more.