Photo by Jordan Barab

Metro isn’t the only agency putting a hold on maintenance work for the holidays. The D.C. Department of Transportation announced yesterday that it’s suspending construction activities on roads and sidewalks during the Christmas and New Year’s Day weekends.

This comes as AAA Mid-Atlantic predicts that 43 percent of D.C.-area residents will travel more than 50 miles during the holiday period. In all, 2,595,300 people in the region are projected to flee during the year-end holidays, which is an increase of 2.2 percent over 2015 and would be the most on record.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority warns of heavy traffic at National “associated with record volumes of travelers flying at the airport.” The agency advises taking Metro to the airport, using the second airport exit from the George Washington Memorial Parkway coming south from D.C., and arriving with plenty of time before flights.

DDOT will suspend work from December 23 at noon through December 26, and again on December 30 at noon through January 2. During these times, there won’t be any lane closures for non-emergency work in the roadways and sidewalks within the District’s right of way.

D.C. is currently seeing the most housing construction activity in more than five decades, according to a recent report by the Washington DC Economic Partnership, which noted that there were 14,847 residential units under construction or renovation as of August.