Many Waze: How to avoid Thanksgiving traffic this week

Turkey, sweaters and bumper-to-bumper traffic. That’s right, it’s that time of year again. While you might not want to avoid the first two, the latter is everyone’s struggle.

Luckily, Waze, a community-based navigation app for smartphones, has done research based on last year’s user data and provided drivers with what they predict to be the times that everyone will hit the road.

Already, Wednesday morning hasn’t turned out to be a good time to travel, with a stalled semi-truck causing northbound Howard Frankland delays for more than three hours as travelers made their way to the airport. The worst is yet to come, though.

Waze says that Wednesday traffic will be the worst between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. That’s about the same time that traffic headed to airports will slow to a crawl, the company said.

Check your cooking list and make sure you’ve got everything you need already. You won’t want to wait until Thursday to hit the grocery store. Your choices are fewer: Publix and Detweilers are closed Thanksgiving Day. And Waze reports that trips to the supermarket increase by nearly 50 percent around 11 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Those last-minute shoppers are expected to flood the roadways from noon to 2 p.m. as they head back home.

But that’ll be nothing compared to Black Friday shoppers, Waze said. Commuters heading to shopping centers and other retail outlets will peak between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Friday and traffic will be unfavorable from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Those returning from vacation are expected to clog roadways over the weekend, too. The company says to avoid driving in the early afternoon on Saturday and Sunday if you can help it. Finally, Monday should round off unusually heavy daily traffic between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.

This story was originally published November 22, 2017 at 11:14 AM with the headline "Many Waze: How to avoid Thanksgiving traffic this week."