AAA believes Thanksgiving week could be record setting for travel in Connecticut

(WFSB) – If you’re hopping in the car soon to head to your turkey day destination, there’s a good chance you’ll end up in some traffic.

AAA believes it could be a record setting travel week in Connecticut.

Dog owners Matt Davids and Gwen Terry were on the road for six hours when we spoke with them earlier Wednesday at a Branford rest stop. They had two more to go before they reached their destination.

We even caught a glimpse of their dog, Kuhno, taking a break from the long car ride.

Luckily, they had encountered minimal traffic so far in their drive from northern Virginia to Burrillville, Rhode Island for Thanksgiving with Matt’s family.

“She wanted to leave later I wanted to leave at 3,4 in the morning. We left at 5,” said Davids. “I’ve made this drive a lot so I try to get ahead of it, so far it’s been okay.”

The Lopez family were celebrating the holiday in Plainfield, which made for a long drive from Washington D.C.

“The drive up was pretty easy. We left around 530 and took 6 hours to get here. pretty straight through,” said Alex Lopez. “Definitely had to take 8-12 hours before.”

The key for the two groups has been leaving early, beating any potential congestion on I-95.

Tracy Noble with AAA claims the travelers will experience the worst bottlenecks from 1:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m.

“So if you are okay driving in the dark those later hours would be better for people moving around,” she said.

She claims nearly 840,000 people living in the state will travel for Thanksgiving. In addition, there is projected to be around 3.5 million people traveling across New England plus thousands just passing through.

Noble says that those figures would be record setting as well as a 2% increase from last year.

“We’ve seen increases for holiday travel throughout all of 2024. The end of the year holidays are no exception. And simply put Thanksgiving is when people just want to share a meal with family and loved ones. They want to be together,” she continued.

AAA says between 12:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. on Sunday and all-day Monday will be when the highways experience significant backups.

The best bet is to travel back home Sunday morning or late Sunday night for a smooth drive.

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