WASHINGTON — It’s common knowledge that hitting the road in the D.C. area, like most places, is particularly tough around Thanksgiving. You may not have realized, however, that this region ranks among the worst in the country for Thanksgiving travel.
Google took traffic data from its Android devices last year and ranked the slowest traffic between the Tuesday before Thanksgiving through the Sunday after, and found that D.C. ranked second nationwide, just behind Los Angeles, for the most clogged roads in the country.
Google adds that the worst day of Thanksgiving week to travel is Wednesday, the day before the holiday. That’s no surprise, but it turns out it may wait a day to come home: Traffic on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Google says, is worse than on the Sunday, and by a wide margin — up to 40 percent.
It also analyzed search-term data for the weekend, and found that you’d better get that ham on Tuesday at the latest. “Ham shop” was the top trending destination search on Google Maps on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, followed by “pie shop” and, perhaps inevitably, “liquor store.”
The data make for some fun speculation. The top search term on Thanksgiving Day nationwide was “buffet restaurants,” which conjures up a picture of some entertaining kitchen failures.
Meanwhile, lots of Chicagoans were searching for bars — family can do that to you — and Houstonians were looking for the nearest doughnut shop.
And while the Black Friday searches were predictable — electronics stores, outlet stores and Christmas tree farms were on top — one of the top search terms in New York was for tattoo shops.
The traffic list, from worst to — well, less worst:
- Los Angeles
- Washington, D.C.
- San Francisco
- Philadelphia
- Dallas
- New York City
- Chicago
- Houston
- Austin
- Miami
- Tampa
- Denver
- Portland, Ore.
- Charlotte, N.C.
- Seattle
- Detroit
- Boston
- Pittsburgh
- St. Louis
- Honolulu
- Providence, R.I.
h/t Fortune
