Rachel Sadon
The future. (Photo by philliefan99)
Think you’re being so smart by taking Friday off, making for a nice four day weekend and an easy getaway at one of the busiest travel times of the year? Unfortunately, everyone else has that idea, too.
The Thursday before Memorial Day was the absolute worst traffic day in the Washington region last year, with an average delay of more than 40 percent on area highways. Yes, even more of a logjam than before Thanksgiving, according to an analysis by the Transportation Planning Board at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
Via MWCOG.
Using “commercially available speed information from the last five years,” the TPB found that the absolute worst of it came on Thursday afternoon between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. The researchers also confirmed that travel on the Thursday before Memorial Day was worse than the Friday for each of the past five years.
They attribute the gridlock to a combination of the regular commute—Thursday afternoons often see the worst traffic on non-holiday weeks—and a deluge of holiday travelers looking to get out of dodge early.
Although Thursday sees the biggest slowdowns, the roads are bad on Friday for a longer period of time—beginning at 11 a.m. and reaching a peak slowdown between 3 and 4 p.m.
Moral of the story: consult this chart before fleeing for the weekend.
Via MWCOG.
