There’s no doubt that the Thanksgiving holiday can be filled with friends, family, joy, reminiscing and gratitude, but with life’s busy schedules it also calls for us to be efficient with our time and traveling. Spending less time on the road and more time with friends and family is a great way to ensure that you have a safe and memorable holiday!
Waze, the traffic and navigation app has crunched the 2016 numbers to bring you a 2017 Thanksgiving, or as Waze calls it, a WazeGiving driving forecast.
They’ve gone even further than years past, with new insights around travel to airports, grocery stores, and shopping centers, giving you even more “Waze” to outsmart the holiday traffic. So keep reading, and get ready to take the traffic on with the strength of the Waze Community behind you.
Nationally, the highest expected surges in traffic might occur at 12pm or later the week of Thanksgiving. And if your travel extends from the car and onto a plane, be sure to add in extra travel time for sure. In 2016, Thanksgiving Eve and the Sunday after Thanksgiving saw the largest peaks in navigations to airports at 3-4pm and 12-5pm, respectively.
As people are headed home, it’s not the big cities expecting the largest increases in traffic, it’s smaller towns across America. So if you think heading back home to you little home town will be easy… think again. You might not be the only one heading that way – give yourself some extra time!
Sometimes you realize on the morning of Thanksgiving that there is that one thing you forgot, so navigations on Waze to supermarkets were up 49% against the average in 2016, and peaking at 11am.
Moral of the story? Head out to the supermarket as early as possible the week prior because navigations to grocery stores continue to grow as the holiday nears. Probably common sense, but maybe not given how many people were heading to the store last minute last year!
In 2016 there was a huge flow of traffic, and people using Waze to find the most efficient way to their destination, to the special midnight sales, but the major increases in traffic came in the afternoon. Drives to holiday Christmas retailers peaked between 11am-3pm on Black Friday and the overall worst time to drive was 2-4pm, so plan ahead and be especially safe and aware of others as you drive through the holidays!