STURGIS - The official highway count for the Sturgis rally won't be available for another week to 10 days, but the state official in charge of counting believes the rally traffic is down from last year.

Dan Staton, regional traffic engineer for the state Department of Transportation, said traffic within Sturgis has been less congested than in previous rallies.

Traffic also has flowed fairly well between Sturgis and the big campgrounds to the east, Staton said.

The DOT won't begin pulling data from the highway traffic counters going into and out of Sturgis until Monday. It will take several days to process that data, Staton said.

"I'm quite certain the numbers will be down at least some or maybe quite dramatically," Staton said Friday.

The DOT puts out the traffic counters on the Wednesday before the rally and collects data for about 12 days, he said.

The daily counts are used to estimate the total rally attendance. That total estimate is just that - an estimate - because some bikers and others go in and out of Sturgis more than once during the rally - and sometimes more than once a day.

But the figures at least indicate attendance trends.

The biggest rally, according to these estimates, was in 2000, when the crowd was estimated at 633,000. After several years of just over 500,000, last year's crowd dropped to 450,000.

Staton says he noticed more motel rooms and even Sturgis yard space for tent camping available right through the rally this year.

City officials, including rally director Pepper Massey, also say this year's crowd will probably be smaller than last year's.

Massey said there were 809 vendors registered with the city as of Thursday, compared with 840 total last year. Meade County Sheriff Ron Merwin said that lower number could reflect vendors with multiple locations consolidating into fewer booths to save rent costs.

Staton said the DOT crews this year began doing time studies to see how long it takes to get through Sturgis east to west and north to south. That will provide a good base for future comparisons, he said.

Next year, the DOT may use some more portable signal lights to get better traffic flow, Staton said. "In the long haul, we need to work toward better flow of traffic and somehow get better coordination of traffic between pedestrians and vehicles."

He said the DOT would like to get signal lights coordinated so traffic flows more normally on Lazelle Street and allow pedestrians to cross more safely.

"Will we have all that accomplished next year? Probably not," he said.

Staton also said traffic officials will try to develop a better east-west circuit north of town along Sly Hill.

One new thoroughfare that has helped ease rally traffic in Sturgis is the new southside service road between Exit 30 and Exit 32.