WASHINGTON — Before you can fight over the last doll inside a toy store on Black Friday, you might have to fight over that last parking spot, which you’ll only find after fighting through the insane amount of traffic leading to the mall.
The Virginia Department of Transportation is doing its part to make your holiday shopping trips to northern Virginia’s busiest retail centers a little more bearable.
Starting Thanksgiving and through the end of the year, more than 200 traffic signals throughout the region have been re-timed to accommodate the increases in traffic that holiday shopping brings. And VDOT says traffic cameras and sensors around those shopping centers will also be monitored in real time and can be adjusted again to keep traffic moving in and out if needed, even on holidays.
“The holiday season is always one of the busiest travel times of the year, but traffic trends can change from one year to the next,” said Ling Li, an operations engineering manager with VDOT, in a statement. “We analyze and revise plans each year to help traffic flow as smoothly as possible.”
VDOT will also have six travel information displays around Tysons Corner set up to display real-time Metrorail arrivals and departures, to go with bus arrivals and updated road conditions around the mall.
Here’s a list of the following malls and shopping centers where lights are being re-timed:
- Tysons and Galleria Shopping Centers
- Reston Town Center
- Fair Lakes Shopping Center
- Fair Oaks Mall
- Potomac Mills Mall
- Manassas Mall
- Springfield Town Center
- Cascades Town Center
- Potomac Run Center
- Dulles Town Center
- Leesburg Outlets
- Dulles 28 Centre
- Virginia Gateway Shopping Center
