Chapter 09 of 15 · about 11 min read · updated October 2026

09Getting there

The bus you ride to Coachella belongs to a company named after a man named Dan. Not literally - the drivers are subcontracted - but follow the shuttle pass up the chain and you reach CID Entertainment, which stands for "Consider It Dan," started by the tour manager of a Philadelphia jam band.³¹³ Above that sits a sports hospitality firm, and above that, four private-equity investors.³¹⁴ None of them is Goldenvoice.

For two weekends every April, Indio has to take in a crowd the size of a small city every afternoon, and send it back out after midnight. The 2019 traffic plan assumed 125,000 people a day.³¹⁵ This chapter is about how they get there: the buses, the roads, the train that ran once, and the private jets.

The shuttle and the man named Dan

Valley Music Travel (VMT) runs the official shuttles. It sells the passes, staffs the stops and answers the phone.³¹⁶ It calls itself the "Official Enhanced Experience Partner of Coachella," and sells black cars and in-venue carts on the side.³¹⁷ Its own About page describes it as "a subsidiary of CID Entertainment."³¹⁸

CID's founder, Dan Berkowitz, became tour manager for the Disco Biscuits in 2004. He noticed most bands didn't offer travel and VIP packages to fans, so he started a company that would. He worked out of an office in the band's studio, and in 2008 sold a small stake for $100,000 to grow it.³¹³ Pollstar puts the founding at 2007.³¹⁹ By 2015 CID had about 60 full-time staff in Philadelphia, and up to 300 people working for it over a big festival weekend. At Coachella, it would "build you a 14-by-14-foot safari tent with full amenities on site."³¹³

In October 2018, On Location Experiences bought CID, according to Berkowitz.³¹⁹ On Location now calls CID "a division of On Location," and lists its own owners as RedBird Capital Partners, Bruin Sports Capital, 32 Equity and the Carlyle Group.³¹⁴ So the chain runs: your shuttle pass, VMT, CID, On Location, private equity. No source shows Goldenvoice or AEG holding a stake in any link of it, and no source rules it out either.

VMT has done the job since at least 2010. That spring Pollstar wrote that "Coachella partnered with Valley Music Travel" for hotel shuttles. 2010 was also the first year everyone got in-and-out privileges, which is what made a hotel shuttle worth having.³²⁰ Goldenvoice used VMT again for Desert Trip in 2016: a $25 pass, over 20 stops, and a shuttle coordinator at every pickup.³²¹

The pass

The product is the "Any Line" pass: one pass, good from any stop, all weekend. Stops sit about 5 to 25 miles from the polo grounds, and not every hotel is one of them. Peak inbound is 2 to 5 p.m. Peak outbound is midnight to 2 a.m., when VMT says it runs "its full fleet."³¹⁶

The price has gone up about two and a half times in eleven years.

The stops are mostly resort hotels down Highway 111. A typical list - this one is VMT's Stagecoach list, which follows the same pattern - runs from the Hampton Inn in Indio through the Hyatt and Renaissance in Indian Wells, the JW Marriott Desert Springs, La Quinta Resort, the Westin in Rancho Mirage and an Albertsons on 111. Three free park-and-rides fill the gaps: the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, Agua Caliente Casino and the Palm Springs Convention Center. Children 10 and under ride free with an adult.³²⁶ In 2015 the list still reached the Palm Springs hotels and a campground at Lake Cahuilla.³²²

The Tennis Garden is the real hub. It's VMT's will-call, where people pick up wristbands, and a free lot.³¹⁶ On Friday, Washington Street outside it becomes a choke point, as people collect wristbands and board buses.³²⁷

For people flying in, there's an LAX shuttle from Terminal 1 baggage claim to the hotel stops, with a separate camping-only version. VMT puts the drive at about three hours without traffic, and says plainly it won't cover a missed flight.³¹⁶ In 2017 it cost $70 each way.³²³ Hotel packages bundle the room, the festival pass and the shuttle; a 2022 list ran from a Residence Inn 4.4 miles away to a Hilton in Palm Springs, 26.4 miles out.³²⁸

The buses drop you at the shuttle lot, about a 10-minute walk from the entrance, with restrooms and lines signed by stop.³¹⁶ The festival's own map puts the Shuttle Lobby on the Yellow Path.³²⁹

The drivers come from everywhere

Here is what isn't public: how many coaches there are, how many drivers, which charter companies supply them, and where they sleep. Nothing published gives a fleet count. The closest thing to one came by accident.

On Sunday night, April 24, 2022, the shuttle drivers ate a catered dinner of pasta and pre-packaged salad at the Riverside County fairgrounds in Indio. Calls started shortly after midnight. Responders treated drivers at the fairgrounds, at "the shuttle bus lot," at hotels and at pickup points across the valley. Forty-six went to hospital: 23 to Eisenhower, 12 to Desert Regional and 11 to JFK Memorial. County health said "more than 100 drivers report being sick."³³⁰ The drivers were subcontracted. The caterer was never named, and officials said it had nothing to do with the festival.³³⁰

So the driver pool is well over 100 people. That's an inference from a food-poisoning count, which tells you how little is published about the fleet. What the outbreak does show is the shape of the thing: a festival-travel company running a subcontracted driver pool for two weekends, then a third for Stagecoach, which VMT also runs on the same hotel-and-park-and-ride model.³²⁶

The train that ran once

Indio used to be a railroad town. Southern Pacific reached it in 1876. Amtrak's Sunset Limited stopped there until October 1998, when, by Wikipedia's account of the station, it closed for "low ridership."³³¹

Ten years later, Coachella got one train. On Thursday, April 24, 2008, a chartered Amtrak train left Los Angeles Union Station for a temporary platform in Indio, arriving at 5 p.m. It had seven cars, including a business-class coach, a café car and a Superliner lounge, and was led by F59PH locomotive No. 458.³³² About 300 festivalgoers were aboard.³³² Riders who had bought three-day passes rode free, and Goldenvoice handed everyone VIP passes for all three days.³³³

It was a party. DJs set up laptops on the stainless steel counters in the back cars, and Junkie XL played breakbeats to a packed car. Rosanna Arquette hosted, followed by a camera crew Goldenvoice had hired. The writer on board for LA Weekly said "the three hours flew by."³³³ At the platform, Indio's mayor said a transportation center would be built there, and an Amtrak vice president agreed that desert passenger service "could and should happen."³³²

It didn't. In 2016 the county transportation commission floated festival trains for 2017 and 2018, under a roughly $1.2M "convenience plan"; the headlines called it "Choo-Choo-Chella."³³⁴ The trains never ran. In 2019 the state awarded the Riverside County Transportation Commission $5.9M in rail money, and the commission added $2.7M, for $8.6M in all. That would have paid for a 900-foot temporary platform at the Indio Transit Center, with festival trains from Union Station "as early as 2020."³³⁵ Then 2020 happened. Wikipedia, citing the Desert Sun, says the plan was cancelled that year, amid the pandemic, after arrangements with Union Pacific fell through.³³¹ The platform was never built.

The long game is Coachella Valley Rail, a proposed daily service on about 144 miles from Los Angeles with nine stops. In January 2026 the commission awarded an $80M contract for its environmental review. The project will likely cost more than $1.5B, and service could start "by 2040."³³⁶ Nobody has promised DJs.

The fast way in

If you have the money, you skip Interstate 10 altogether and land in Thermal.

Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport, in Thermal, was built in 1942 as a WWII Army airfield. It has an 8,500-foot runway, and Wikipedia's entry on it says its busy season is the horse show circuit, December to March - not April.³³⁷ In April, the pop-ups arrive.

• 2016: Uber and Blade flew helicopters from Van Nuys for $4,170 one way, or $695 a seat with six aboard, with an Uber for the last leg and a tequila bar before takeoff. Uber's pitch: "There's no traffic 1,000 feet in the air."³³⁸
• 2017: XOJET flights to three desert airports were up 40%, according to a Quartz report cited by an industry site.³³⁹
• 2022: Blade said it was flying roughly 200 passengers into Thermal from Santa Monica, turning "a five-hour car ride into only 40 minutes in the air."³⁴⁰
• 2026: JSX ran Santa Monica to Thermal on April 9, back on April 13, nonstop in 50 minutes, for $606 each way.³⁴¹

No one publishes how many private jets land on festival weekends.

The commercial airport, Palm Springs International, feels it in fares rather than records. In one festival year (the San Francisco Chronicle's piece is undated, likely 2019), round trips from San Francisco ran about $600 to $800 for weekend 1 and $500 to $600 for weekend 2, against about $320 in early April.³⁴² The airport's busiest month ever, with nearly 500,000 passengers, was March 2025 - the month before the festival.³⁴³

Down on the ground, the top of the price ladder is a staging pass for your hired car. For 2026, the festival charged $3,500 for a vehicle with 10 seats or fewer, and $5,000 for anything bigger, up to a 35-foot bus - "for drivers to service pre-booked clients only."³²⁹ The sky above the grounds is closed: a federal flight restriction banned drones from April 9 to 13, 2026.³²⁵

The roads

Most people drive. Indio prepares by closing its own streets.

The long closure is Avenue 50 between Monroe and Madison, shut for about six weeks, through both Coachella weekends and Stagecoach. In 2024 it ran from March 25 to May 6. "The closure of Avenue 50 is essential to ensure the safety of workers, residents, and commuters alike," said Jim Curtis, the city's community services manager.³⁴⁴ In 2026 it closed March 23 and reopened after May 4.³⁴⁵

Then, Friday to Monday of each festival weekend, four more go:³⁴⁶

• Avenue 49, between Hjorth and Monroe
• Avenue 50, between Madison and Jackson
• Hjorth Street, between Avenues 49 and 50
• Madison Street, between Avenues 49 and 52

It's the same list Indio published in 2019.³²⁴ Inbound traffic peaks from about 3 to 8 p.m., Friday to Sunday, on Jefferson, Washington and Monroe. Outbound runs from about midnight to 3 a.m.³²⁷ Caltrans watches the climb in from the coast: I-10 from Beaumont and SR-60 from Moreno Valley, eastbound peaking Friday and westbound Sunday.³¹⁵

The police side is a numbers game. Indio PD's traffic division runs festival enforcement. In a crackdown briefing in April 2025, it cited 112 arrests and 83 citations for misused disabled placards, and a 40% spike in arrests on the year before.³⁴⁷ Weekend 2 of 2026 ended with 106 arrests and 87 placard citations, and when festival lots filled, police sent the overflow to the Tennis Garden.³⁴⁸

The last mile

Wherever you start, you finish on foot. The festival sorts arrivals by lot. Rideshare goes to Lot 1D at Avenue 49 and Monroe, open 11 a.m. to 3 a.m., with the longest waits from midnight to 2:30. Friends and taxis drop at Lot 13, at Avenue 52 and Madison. Walkers and cyclists get four color-coded entries - Red, Green, Yellow and Blue - and no pedestrians are allowed on Monroe between Avenues 49 and 52. A bike locked anywhere but a rack "will be removed and forfeited." Day parking isn't guaranteed, and "Cars left after 2am will be towed."³²⁹

The cheerful exception is Carpoolchella, a program run with the nonprofit Global Inheritance. Cars with four or more people, decorated and spotted on the way in, can win backstage passes, VIP upgrades or "VIP tickets for life."³²⁹³⁴⁹ It's an incentive to fill the car, wrapped as a contest. In 2026, cars in a grocery store lot in Indio were already decorated for it at 1 a.m. on Thursday.³⁵⁰ Global Inheritance also organized the 2008 train.³⁴⁹

On the way in, you'll pass the billboards. They're the subject of their own chapter: the I-10 billboard archive.

The line

The worst wait in the festival's recent history wasn't for a stage. It was for the campground.

On Thursday, April 10, 2025, campers sat in their cars for 8, 10, 12 hours. One told KESQ she'd arrived at 3 a.m. and it was almost 11. Another said, "Seven hours into this." The first: "I've seen people pass out through heat exhaustion, it's been chaos."³⁵¹ There were no restrooms, and some people relieved themselves on the roadside, in a heat wave.³⁵²

Five days later, Goldenvoice's head of public safety, George Cunningham, went to the La Quinta City Council. His explanation: the usual midday lull never came. "Everybody wanted to come early." Three things had stacked up. The festival's first-ever Thursday night campground concert pulled people in early. Unlike some past years, nobody was let in before the official 9 a.m. opening, so the queue backed onto public roads. And not every checkpoint was fully staffed.³⁵³ Then he apologized: "Again, [we] apologize for what took place to your residents, the impact that it had to the community."³⁵²

The fix was more booths. For weekend 2, Goldenvoice added 12 toll plazas near Madison and Avenue 50, for 44 in all.³⁵³ The camping chapter picks up the line from inside the car.

Monday

The festival ends on Sunday night. The exodus is Monday morning.

More than 40,000 campers leave after each weekend.³²⁵ It's been about that many for years: Indio expected "nearly 40,000" in 2019.³²⁴ Camper gates open around 8:30 to 9 a.m., and Washington, Jefferson and Monroe fill at once. Things usually ease by about 11:30. The city's advice for anyone heading west is to be on I-10 "before 9 a.m." After that, expect the freeway to be gridlocked for most of the day.³²⁷

Then the roads reopen, the buses go back to wherever they came from, and Indio does it again the next Thursday.

Still open

• How many coaches and drivers VMT runs, and which charter companies supply them.
• When CID took over VMT. VMT says it's a subsidiary; no announcement has turned up.
• Where the buses go between weekend 2 and Stagecoach.
• Any count of private jet landings at Thermal on festival weekends.