Traffic impacts anticipated around upcoming opening of third ‘In-N-Out’ in Colorado Springs

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Many customers remember not only the excitement of the popular In-N-Out Burger chain when it opened its first two restaurants here in 2020 and 2021.

They also remember the long lines that added to traffic congestion for weeks after openings at the intersections of Interquest and Voyager parkways, and Powers Boulevard and Constitution Avenue.

Now, KRDO 13's The Road Warrior is hearing from several viewers dreading the potential traffic impacts when the city's third In-N-Out opens -- which is expected to be later this year.

The concern is that the burger joint will be along Garden of the Gods Road, just west of Interstate 25; it's an area that already experiences heavy restaurant traffic from eateries such as Chick-Fil-A, The Juicy Seafood, Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers and Village Inn.

Because drive-thru business at fast-food restaurants has increased considerably since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, drivers worry that traffic will spill over onto the busy I-25/Garden of the Gods interchange.

However, city traffic engineer Todd Frisbie explains two reasons why he believes the initial traffic impacts of the third In-N-Out will be less than for the first two.

"We're requiring these places now to have bigger capacity in their drive-thrus, to be able to handle most of their drive-thru traffic on their site and not have it spill out onto a street or road," he said. "We ask them in the development process, maximize your queuing as much as possible with the site that you have. And we've found that approach seems to work well."

Frisbie said that during the planning process, In-N-Out agreed to increase its drive-thru capacity from a maximum of 100 feet to as much as 450 feet.

"When the store at Powers and Constitution opened, we had traffic control in place, in anticipation of heavy traffic," he recalled. "But we found that we didn't need it after the first few days because the queuing did a great job of keeping traffic on the site and off the street."

Another trend, Frisbie adds, is that as In-N-Out and Whataburger open more restaurants locally, they become less of a novelty than in earlier openings.

A construction foreman said that the new store will have something the other two don't -- a drive-thru wide enough to hold two lanes of customers between the entrance and the cashier window.

Drivers and customers will be watching the next In-N-Out opening to see if the city's prediction holds true.