Traverse City News and Events

Record Year: Airport Traffic, Parkway Project Among Traverse City's Eye-Popping 2024 Numbers

By Craig Manning | Dec. 31, 2024

2024 was a super-sized year, and not just because it was a Leap Year with an extra 24 hours on the calendar. Today, The Ticker bids farewell to the year with our annual by-the-numbers breakdown.

Grandview Parkway

A year ago, when we ran through our “what to watch” for 2024, the $25 million reconstruction of Grandview Parkway was at the top of our list. Here are some eye-popping numbers from behind the orange barrel, according to Team Elmer’s Communications & Marketing Director Tonya Wildfong.

2: Number of miles of roadway, in total, that Team Elmer’s rebuilt on the Parkway this year.

63,377: Feet of new yellow pavement marking that Elmer’s put down across those two miles.

53,973: Square feet of new sidewalk.

36,483: Feet of new concrete curb

27,274: Amount of aggregate base put down, in tons, to serve as the foundation of the new Parkway.

25,057: Tons of hot mix asphalt used to pave the two-mile stretch.

232: Number of days between when Team Elmer's kicked off Parkway construction on March 10 and finished the project on October 28. Traverse City drivers got an 18-day break without construction in the middle of that span, from the June 20 completion of phase one and the July 8 commencement of phase two.

2024 General Election

84,370: Grand Traverse County’s tally of registered voters for this fall’s election.

29,586: Absentee ballots returned by Election Day. That’s 96.65 percent of the total number of absentee ballots issued in Grand Traverse County (30,613) and 35 percent of the county’s total electorate.

15,669: County residents who participated in early voting, an option introduced for the first time this election. The biggest day for early voting in Grand Traverse County? The Sunday before Election Day, when 2,362 people voted.

63,221: Total number of ballots cast in Grand Traverse County this election, good for a voter turnout of 74.93 percent.

1,084: The number of Grand Traverse County votes that separated President-Elect Donald Trump – who won the county with 31,423 votes – from his challenger, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

12: Grand Traverse County residents who voted for a write-in candidate for president. 11 of those votes were for Peter Sonski, a former radio host and the candidate for the American Solidarity Party.

1,364.25: Hours worked by the City of Traverse City’s 65 total election inspectors this fall, according to City Clerk Benjamin Marentette. Per Marentette, the city’s voter turnout was just slightly higher than the county’s (75.06 percent) and more than half of voters either cast their ballots by mail (36.4 percent) or voted early (16.3 percent).

City of Traverse City Statistics

3: Tons of pumpkin waste collected through the city’s new Pumpkin Smashing Extravaganza this fall. The original goal was one ton, which Marentette says the city hit “in the first four days of drop-off.” The goal of the program was to divert post-Halloween pumpkin waste from landfills; the pumpkins were composted instead.

227: Number of resident queries submitted to the city’s new AI-driven Ask the City program, as of December 16. “At five minutes per query, this represents roughly 18 hours of staff time saved,” Marentette says.

30+: New park signs installed throughout the city this year, including park identification monuments, information kiosks, guide signs, trail markers, and regulatory markers. “The consistency of this new package allows the Parks and Recreation Division to have a level of cohesion to better educate the public on park rules, wayfinding information, and environmental education,” Marentette explains.

$2.5 million: The city's investment into this year's reconstruction of Veterans Drive.

Northwestern Michigan College

$1,342,649: Total tuition dollars awarded to NMC students in 2024 through the Michigan Reconnect program, which offers free in-district tuition to adults who don’t already have college degrees. The program has been extra active this year, thanks to a temporary eligibility expansion from the state that opened it up to anyone over the age of 21. As of tomorrow (January 1), Reconnect eligibility reverts to ages 25 and up, but NMC Communications Director Cari Noga says students aged 21 to 24 still have until midnight to apply.

325: NMC students in the 21-to-24 age bracket that have taken advantage of the expanded Michigan Reconnect eligibility this year, to the tune of $750,000 in tuition dollars.

74: The age of the oldest student at NMC to utilize the Michigan Reconnect program. Per Noga, 22 of the college’s Reconnect students are over the age of 50, and four are older than 60.

$904,930: Total Community College Guarantee dollars awarded to NMC students in 2024. The Community College Guarantee is a newer state program that makes it possible for students from the high school class of 2023 and after to have most of their community college expenses covered, including in-district tuition, contact hours, and mandatory fees.

1,939: Guests served this year at NMC’s Lobdell’s Teaching Restaurant.

12: Graduates in NMC’s first-ever BSN nursing class.

Other miscellaneous Traverse City stats

778,779: Estimated total passenger count at Cherry Capital Airport for 2024, according to TVC Director Kevin Klein. That number, Klein says, is “current through November,” with a “December estimate” factored in. If the count holds true, it will make 2024 the second-straight record year for TVC, and it’s not close: This year’s tally is up 11.1 percent from 2023, which finished out at 700,699.

2: Number of boys high school tennis players from Traverse City who won 34 or more matches this year. Tanner Cooley from Traverse City Central, won 36 matches at No. 1 singles in Division 1, en route to a state quarterfinal appearance, while Owen Jackson from St. Francis High School went 34-6 at No. 1 singles in Division 4, finishing as runner-up at the state finals. The two had the second and third best win-loss records in the state this year, behind Midland Dow’s Austin King, who won 38 matches and clinched a second straight state Division 1 title at No. 1 singles.

3: Consecutive wins at the Bayshore Marathon for Rockford’s Zach Ripley, who defended his title in the men’s marathon with a time of 2:19:22. Ripley competed in this year's Olympic Trials in the marathon after qualifying at Bayshore 2023.

11: Number of “Top 10” rankings the National Weather Service observed for Traverse City temperatures and precipitation this year. Those rankings indicate exceptionally warm, cold, wet, or dry weather patterns in the region – both for individual months and full seasons – based on decades of weather data. (Note that data for this year so far excludes December totals as well as the overall Winter 2024-25 report.) Highlights include the warmest winter and warmest February ever recorded in TC, the second warmest fall on record, the second warmest spring, and the third driest fall.

73: Temperature recorded in Traverse City, in Fahrenheit, on February 27, marking the warmest February day in local history. Also headline-worthy: a 97-degree high on August 26, which not only marked the hottest day of 2024, but the warmest August day in 23 years and the warmest summertime high in TC since June 30, 2018.

$1 million: The value of a winning Powerball ticket purchased on August 24 at Traverse City’s Family Fare store on Eighth Street. The winner, identified on the Michigan Lottery website as 74-year-old Kristina Love, said she typically plays Fantasy 5, but bought a Powerball ticket that day “on a whim.” As detailed in our by-the-numbers rundown from last year, Traverse City also had million-dollar jackpot winners in 2023 and 2022.

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