Thanksgiving Day 2012 News Release

What do the colors mean for drivers?

Traffic analysts looked at how many cars were on the road on past Thanksgiving weekends. The vertical axis shows how many cars are projected to be on the road for each hour (shown on the horizontal axis). As the graphs turn from green to yellow, drivers can expect some congestion. At the hours shown as red, traffic analysts predict travel will reach capacity for that stretch of roadway. Once a roadway reaches capacity, any small incident can cause significant backups.

What about the black line?

The horizontal black line shows typical traffic. This gives drivers more information on how the Thanksgiving 2012 holiday weekend travel may relate to a typical fall weekend.