So what’s the economic impact of Route 66?

Here's a story from the Bloomington Pantagraph about the allure of Route 66. Here's a side story about the number of foreign tourists the road draws.

These two paragraphs jumped out at me:

More than 300,000 tourists drive Route 66 through Illinois each year, according to the Illinois Route 66 Heritage Project, based in Springfield. Precise figures on the economic impact are not available.

“It has an impact of millions of dollars,” said Patty Ambrose, executive director of the heritage project. “Route 66 is the No. 3 tourism draw in Illinois. Chicago is No. 1, and the (Abe) Lincoln sites are No. 2.”

I have doubts the number of travelers specifically traveling old Route 66 is that high. That averages to more than 800 people a day. During the height of tourism season in the early spring and summer, maybe. But not the whole year. Maybe the Heritage Project is also counting incidental traffic.

The city of Tulsa once cited a figure of 50,000 visitors a year on Route 66, which sounds a lot more realistic.

However, the "millions of dollars" of economic impact is easy to believe, because it doesn't take a lot of money per capita to hit the seven-figure mark. Just finding lodging for the night will be in the $40- to $80-a-night range. And folks who travel the old road love buying Route 66 souvenirs.

And after the "Cars" movie comes out, who knows? Maybe that 300,000 mark won't be so far-fetched after all.

2 thoughts on “So what’s the economic impact of Route 66?

  1. There’s a lot of incidental traffic in Illinois, especially south of Hamel in the Metro East and north of Springfield where the frontage roads These aren’t the busiest roads, not even several of the alignments that are currently state roads (like SR-159 between Edwardsville and Hamel, and SR-53 for a while just north of Gardner; closer to Wilmington it becomes busy.) But there’s enough traffic, certainly enough to average 800 cars a day total; one stretch of SR-4 I travel in the south averages about 2500/day according to IDOT, and most stretches of 66 have less, but not much less, traffic than that. The larger question, the one you asked, is how much of this is actual tourism. I think it to be quite a small percentage.

  2. Peter, I agree with you. Inadvertantly or not, I think someone fudged the figures on the number of Route 66 travelers. I think it’s a great disservice to play up something bigger than it is.

    Route 66 is gradually gaining in popularity with travelers, and it probably will get a bump from the “Cars” movie. But there’s no sense in telling a Route 66 entrepreneur that there are 300,000 travelers a year on the road — especially when the vast majority are commuters who won’t even get out of the car until they’re at home.

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