Rachel Sadon
(Photo by Tim Brown)
Trying to get around by car this afternoon? Brace yourself.
While traffic on the days before Memorial Day weekend is always bad, some of the worst of it is consistently on Thursday afternoon.
In 2014, in fact, it was the absolute worst traffic day of the entire year, with an average delay of more than 40 percent on area highways, according to an analysis by the Transportation Planning Board at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
Things weren’t quite as dire in 2015, but the Thursday afternoon before the holiday was still no pleasant joy ride. They explain the logjam as a conflation of two trends: “One is that Thursday afternoons are already the most congested time during a typical, non-holiday week thanks to regular rush-hour commute traffic. The other is holiday travelers looking to get an early start to the weekend by leaving on Thursday.”
(Courtesy of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board)
On the flip side, the Transportation Planning Board data shows that the Thursday afternoon rush has consistently ended at 8:00 p.m., with traffic not getting bad again until 11 a.m. on Friday. So an overnight road trip is the best bet for avoiding gridlock-induced road rage.
Planning to flee this weekend? Drill down into the history of specific routes here:
