With the second installment of the Pemberton Music Festival quickly approaching, organizers are hosting an information session on Wednesday (June 10) to let locals know how they’ll be affected.

The session — running from 7 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. at the Pemberton Community Centre — will offer Pembertonians an update on traffic management, parking issues and how they can get involved. It will also give locals a chance to ask questions.

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“In the first year we were pretty pleased with how everything went, but there’s certainly room to make everything better,” said Maureen Douglas, community relations director with the festival. “There’s always an opportunity to respond to what our guests are telling us and how we can meet their needs.”

There were major concerns last year that the festival might cause the kind of chaos on the roads that locals saw during the one-time 2008 festival, put on by Live Nation. But, for the most part, the traffic plan unfolded without a hitch, Douglas said.

“We’re really just going to build upon the success of 2014. It was a profound improvement on 2008. We’re expecting very minor slow downs that happen at the bus site for the festival, but that’s it. It took people five to 10 extra minutes to get through that,” she said.

They are also expanding the local shuttle service to start running on the event’s Thursday night. The parking passes that were implemented for street parking will continue to help ensure locals and their guests can park in front of their homes without hassle. “We had just under 200 people pick up parking passes to make sure they had their residential parking (last year),” Douglas said. “It allows for two street parking spots per residence.”

One issue that came up last year was the local business community feeling like they weren’t able to take advantage of the influx of visitors; most festival-goers remained on site outside of town throughout the weekend. Douglas said the festival is working with the Pemberton Chamber of Commerce to create more opportunities. But on top of that, local vendors who last year were set up in a quiet corner at one of the festival entrances, will be mixed into the main area this year.

There will also be a “morning zone” that will open at 8 a.m. with breakfast food, yoga and cartoons. That area will feature produce from local farmers as part of a mini-market. “Farmers will be there with fresh produce, fruit, things people would want to grab and have with them first thing in the morning. That’s a good change we’ve made with the farmers,” Douglas said.

Meanwhile, there are also some logistical changes that will affect all festival-goers. This year, there will be a defined line on the highway to create a bike and pedestrian lane rather than re-routing commuters onto a trail, which Douglas said was probably a little intimidating for those who don’t often ride a bike.

There will also be stations for charging your phone — in part a safety measure in case anyone needs to call authorities. More water stations will also be featured throughout the site. “We really want to reinforce that personal wellness factor for people because it could be a hot one,” Douglas said.

Behind-the-scenes, the crew is putting the site on a grid system — rather than using Pemberton place names like last year — to help emergency services and volunteers more easily identify a particular location.

Finally, there will also be changes to the campground — which is one of the biggest festival campgrounds in the country. Namely, organizers are working to make sure campers won’t have to walk so far from their vehiclesto their campsite — one of the major complaints heard from festival-goers last year. “We’re really working to make it as successful and comfortable as possible,” Douglas said. “It’s about making it that much better every single year.”



For more information visit pembertonmusicfestival.com.