Heather Curtis
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON (WMAL) – Two in 10 Washingtonians will travel 50 miles or more this Thanksgiving, which is the highest number in a dozen years.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving used to be the worst day to travel, which is why many people leave Tuesday. Now Tuesday is the worst day for Washingtonians to travel.
“Traffic will be horrendous because it will increase by a factor of two the Tuesday before Thanksgiving especially between 4:45 p.m. and 6 p.m. It will be horrendous, horrific and terrible,” said AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesperson John Townsend.
The roads in the D.C. metro area with the worst traffic, according to Townsend, will be I-95 in Maryland and Virginia, MD 295, 495 in MD and 270. INRIX, a transportation analytics company, rates I-95 Southbound at US-1/US-1
To avoid getting stuck in insanity-inducing bumper-to-bumper traffic, Townsend recommends traveling at off-peak times, either very early in the morning or late at night. He said anyone with vacation days to burn before the end of the year should leave the Monday before Thanksgiving and come back the Tuesday after.
Washingtonians won’t be the only ones stuck in traffic. AAA predicts 51 million Americans will travel, which is the most since 2005. Nearly 90 percent of those people will be taking road trips. Gas prices are the most expensive they’ve been since 2014, but Townsend said they are still less expensive than other years.
Even though the majority of travelers will be taking road trips, airlines are seeing a 5 percent increase in flyers, or about 4 million people. While planes may be more crowed, there is some relief for flyers – airfares are the cheapest they have been since 2013. A round-trip flight on one of the top 40 domestic routes will cost an average of $157, which represents a 23 percent drop from 2016.
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