Thanksgiving traffic expected to climb with lower gas prices
If you like crowds and tumbling gasoline prices, the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday travel season was made for you.
A strong economy, wages that have been steadily increasing, and falling fuel prices will combine to coax an estimated 54.3 million travelers onto the nation’s highways and into airports and train stations for the Thanksgiving holiday, according to travel organization AAA.
In Wisconsin, 1.12 million people are expected to travel during the Wednesday-to-Sunday period. Of those, about 999,000 will travel by passenger vehicle. That’s a 5 percent increase compared with last year, according to AAA.
“Consumers have a lot to be thankful for this holiday season: higher wages, more disposable income and rising levels of household wealth,” Bill Sutherland, AAA Travel senior vice president, said in a statement. “This is translating into more travelers kicking off the holiday season with a Thanksgiving getaway, building on a positive year for the travel industry.”
Gas prices falling
Motorists will find cheaper pump prices as they hit the road for Thanksgiving, and those prices are likely to fall even further once the holiday travel period is complete, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Assoc., an oil trading advisory firm in Galena, Illinois.
AAA says 48.5 million people will be traveling on the nation’s roads and highways for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Pump prices are falling because crude oil prices, which approached four-year highs in early October, have lost about a quarter of their value in the past six
weeks, Ritterbusch said.
All those cars on the road will make for lots of traffic, says INRIX, a global mobility analytics company. Travel times in the most congested U.S. cities could be as much as four times longer than a normal trip, the company is forecasting.
“Thanksgiving is one of the busiest holidays for road trips, and this year will be no different,” Trevor Reed, transportation analyst at INRIX, said in a statement. “Knowing when and where congestion will build can help drivers avoid the stress of sitting in traffic.
“Our advice to drivers is to avoid commuting times in major cities altogether or plan alternative routes.”
Starting early
The Thanksgiving holiday period is generally defined as the Wednesday before Thanksgiving through the Sunday after the holiday, but a lot of travel started Friday.
“We have started to see a trend in which the Thanksgiving holiday period actually begins the Friday before Thanksgiving,” said Lisa Farbstein, a Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman.
That trend is also being seen at Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, where Thanksgiving week travel tends to shift from business travelers to leisure travelers — often families traveling with children — passing through the security checkpoints, gates and concourses at the airport.
“We actually start seeing that changeover the Friday before Thanksgiving,” said Pat Rowe, a spokeswoman for the Milwaukee County-owned airport.
Still, the busiest travel days for the holiday period are expected to be Wednesday and the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when holiday travelers — and in Wisconsin, deer hunters — all head for home.
Air travel may set record
The TSA says that, on average, it screens 2.1 million to 2.2. million passengers and crew members nationwide per day. Those numbers are likely to swell by 25 percent or more on many days around Thanksgiving.
The exception is Thanksgiving Day, historically a light travel day when most U.S. air carriers operate reduced flight schedules. Travel on the Friday after Thanksgiving also is usually light. That has an impact on airfares. “An analysis of AAA’s flight booking data from the last three years revealed that the Tuesday and Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving are usually the most popular air travel days and have the highest average price per round trip ticket,” AAA said in a statement. “Meanwhile, Thanksgiving Day consistently has the lowest average price per ticket and is the lightest travel day.”
Procrastinators may find last-minute flight availability to be very limited, AAA said.
The TSA is expecting a record-breaking number of flyers this Thanksgiving holiday travel period, with more than 25 million passengers traveling through security screening checkpoints nationwide Friday through Nov. 26, an increase of 5 percent from 2017.
As for the weather, long-range forecasts show no big, travel-disrupting storms hitting Wisconsin or the U.S.