Holiday travel expected to be spread out over two weeks; busiest days projected

The West Virginia Turnpike is expecting 1.48 million transactions over the 14-day travel period from Friday through Jan. 2.

AAA predicts that nearly 600,000 West Virginians are expected to travel for the year-end holidays, contributing to national travel numbers that are expected to be record-breaking as more than 119 million travel nationwide.

AAA’s 2024 West Virginia travel forecast is about 2.9% higher than the number of travelers for the year-end holidays in 2023. Nationwide, this year’s forecast eclipses 2023’s numbers by 3 million travelers, the motor club said in a news release.

To formulate a travel forecast, the West Virginia Parkways Authority reviewed last year’s travel numbers as well as 2019 data, which had the same number of holiday travel days as 2024.

“The 14-day Christmas/New Years traffic forecast is a bit different than other holidays throughout the year as traffic tends to be more spread out throughout the two-week period,” Jeff Miller, executive director of the West Virginia Parkways Authority, said in a news release.

Worst days/times to travel

According to AAA, the worst times to travel by car are the weekend before Christmas and weekend before New Year’s Day. Sunday is expected to be the worst day for road travel. Leaving in the morning is recommended to avoid the heaviest traffic.

“We could see some snow [continuing] into Saturday morning. I could see about two to four inches in some of the higher elevations in the mountains. But elsewhere, we’ll just have ... maybe some light snow showers on Saturday morning, but then we should dry out for Saturday afternoon and Sunday,” said Joe Curtis, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Charleston.

Curtis also says that the chance of a white Christmas is unlikely. The entire state — even the mountains — will see rain on Christmas Day.

In West Virginia, the Parkways Authority said Friday was expected to be the busiest travel day, followed by Sunday, with 135,000 toll transactions predicted.

Air travel, by the numbers

While the majority of West Virginians will be driving to their destinations, there will be more people flying for the end-of-year holidays than last year. That’s also true nationwide, making for busy airports.

According to Lori Weaver Hawkins, public affairs manager at AAA Blue Grass, 33,631 West Virginians are expected to take to the skies during this year-end holiday travel period — a 5.5% increase from 2023.

Nationwide, 7.85 million people will fly during this holiday travel period, a 4.7% increase compared to 2023.

The West Virginia International Yeager Airport near Charleston screened about 600 people on Wednesday. On the busiest days of the holiday travel period, it expects to screen about 1,000 people per day.

“We are fully staffed and we’ll use overtime to encourage officers to work extra hours to have additional staff on hand to handle the greater number of travelers,” said Lisa Farbstein, spokesperson for strategic communications and public affairs at the Transportation Security Administration.