Report: D.C. Traffic Lightest Friday Mornings, Heaviest Friday Afternoons
POLL: Which is your worst day for traffic? Report by Inrix for Governing magazine shows weekday traffic lightest on Friday mornings.
The Washington, D.C. area's best—as in shortest time to get to work—weekday commute is on Friday mornings, according to data compiled by Inrix for Governing magazine.
But Friday is tricky—the Friday afternoon commute in the D.C. area is the worst of the week, according to the report.
The reasoning behind the best/worst commute day? Mornings are likely light due to federal employees taking advantage of telecommuting policies, the report said. And Friday afternoon is probably the worst due to people traveling for the weekend throughout the area and through the area on I-95 and the Beltway.
The report showed that D.C. ranked 9th in the country for Friday commutes and its traffic on Fridays is 25 percent longer than without any congestion. That adds nearly 8 minutes to a typical 30-minute drive, the report noted.
How about you? What's your worst commute day during the week? Take our poll and let us know.
T Ailshire
12:16 pm on Friday, July 27, 2012
What is "the area"? There are places I avoid during the week and during rush hours, and completely different places I avoid on weekends.
Elayne
12:51 pm on Friday, July 27, 2012
Here it is in a nut shell.! Work days going into DC, and worse if you have a selfish idiot speeding zig zaging through traffic and has an accident. Weekends leaving springfield/Dc going south with HOV open south..It jams up every single time south of woodbridge by quantico HOV merging onto 95. This place is horrible you do have to time your travel even for simple errands.
Mary Ann Barton
2:19 pm on Friday, July 27, 2012
Elayne I'm always surprised when the weekend traffic is really bad!
Lee Hernly
3:50 pm on Friday, July 27, 2012
Thursday is the worst.
Dwayne & Maryanne Moyers
4:26 pm on Saturday, July 28, 2012
Federal, State, and Regional Transportation Boards = Epic Fail. Anyone and everyone involved in the funding and decision making for the Northern Virginia regional transportation network during the last 40 years should be embarrassed for the masterpiece of confusion, ineffective design, and lack of mass transit they have created. Getting to and from work, or just trying to pass through the Metropolitan Washington, D.C. area takes time off your life. Well done.
Sally Spangler
11:30 am on Tuesday, July 31, 2012
During the summer, traffic is usually lighter. After Labor Day, everybody goes to work on Wednesdays, but for some reason the going home traffic is lighter. Friday morning is(was when I was still working) and then everybody who had not gone home on Wednesday afternoons plus the people who went work on Friday, finally went home of Friday afternoon! That was either when I drove myself, or part of a van pool, rode the bus (when there was one) or went by metro after driving 12 miles to get to the head of the metro. Public transportation, metro, particularly is/was terrible - crowded with standees after 9AM and standees like sardines in a can after 5PM going home. Never mind that metro is EXPENSIVE!