As a result, local and state police officials are bracing for bottlenecks and lost motorists when rock music fans come from all directions on two-lane rural highways to the alternative rockfestival, Rolling Rock Town Faire, on August 5.

Some residents and business owners along the rural routes don’t know what to think about the impending traffic crush.

“I had not heard about it,” said Richard Leeper, referring to plans to route traffic on Clay Pike Road and past Leeper’s Market. “Hopefully, they’ll have signs directing people.”

The concert, featuring Red Hot Chili Peppers, Moby, Filter, and others, is expected todraw 35,000 people to a Westmoreland County venue about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh. Thefacility rarely draws half as many people – and then only for the county’s fair, not a daylong rockconcert.

LaBatt USA, the parent company of Latrobe Brewing Co., which makes Rolling Rock beer and is also producing the festival, hired a Pittsburgh traffic consultant to figure out how to deal with gridlock, which seems unavoidable.

The results of Herbert, Rowland & Grubic Inc.’s study helped event organizers map directions for concertgoers coming from every conceivable direction. To the festival’s credit, the Town Faire Web site offers maps and explicit written directions to help make life easier on locals and concertgoers alike. The Web site also encourages attendees to car pool.

The consulting firm says about 35,000 people will attend the show, based on 20,000 tickets sold, 13,000 more that were given away in contests, plus 2,000 handed out to VIPs.

TicketMaster says 17,160 ticket holders are coming from west of the venue, 8,060 from the east, 5,590 from the north and 4,190 from the south, the study found.

Much of the audience is expected to arrive from cities as far away as Boston, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. – so the chance they’ll get lost on roads that manage to confound even some regular fairgoers is high, the study suggests.

The congestion-easing plan also calls for at least three other offsite parking areas where bus shuttle service will be offered to the concert.

That’s because the fairgrounds has parking for only 7,000 vehicles, but the traffic study shows about 12,800 cars will be driven to the concert.

State police in nearby Greensburg and the Westmoreland County Sheriff’s Office will step up traffic patrols during the concert. The brewery is also making a donation to local volunteerfirefighters who are helping with traffic control at one of the offsite parking areas. “It’s not going to be anything like going to a concert, like, say at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh,” said Claude Petroy, Westmoreland County’s director of parks and roads. “It’s all two-lane roads to the fairgrounds and there will be a ton of traffic no matter which way you go that day.”