Thanksgiving traffic: The Bay Area’s best/worst times to hit the road

Bay Area drivers looking to beat the Thanksgiving rush this Wednesday will have their work cut out for them. Two main East Bay arteries – Interstate 580 and Interstate 80 – will see double the traffic as last year, picking up around noon and gaining steam until it crescendos into a mess of congestion late afternoon, according to AAA.

“Things were tough in 2019. And they’re going to be tough again,” said John Goodwin, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. “It’s sort of baked into the pie.”

Bay Area highways won’t be the only choke points. Holiday travel is on the rebound nationally this year with nearly 4 million more people driving this Thanksgiving than last year.

The data suggests the absolute worst time to travel will be between 4-6 p.m. on Wednesday, although the roads will start clogging up starting as early as noon.

Eastbound I-80 will see a crush of cars starting near the Bay Bridge toll plaza and continuing all the way to San Pablo, according to travel analytics firm INRIX, which produced the AAA data. At peak congestion, this section of I-80 — commonly referred to as the Eastshore freeway — will see 278% of normal vehicle traffic, making it the sixth-worst metro corridor in the country to traverse, behind roadways in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, and Houston.

“You can likely bet on all of the major highways out of the Bay Area are going to be very congested,” said Sergio Avila, spokesperson for AAA Northern California, Nevada and Utah. “Wednesday right around the afternoon is when people are getting out of work, mixed in with people heading to a destination.”

Eastbound I-580 starting near Hayward and down past Livermore will also be jammed with more than double the normal traffic. Other packed roadways include Highway 101 North from the Golden Gate Bridge to San Rafael and northbound I-680 starting in Milpitas. Drivers heading to Southern California will have a second, and even more daunting challenge: I-5, which is predicted to nearly quadruple in congestion Wednesday afternoon in central and southern Los Angeles County.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving will bring lesser but still heavy traffic to the Bay Area, with westbound I-80 from Albany through San Francisco seeing 125% of normal congestion levels. The worst time to travel on Sunday is between 1-7 p.m., Avila said.