Really??? Lower Gas Prices...
Wisconsin roads should be dry Wednesday for the start of the
Thanksgiving weekend, but there will be fewer travelers despite lower
gas prices compared to a year ago, according to officials.
The
statewide average for regular self-service gasoline was $3.16 on Monday,
25 cents less than the $3.41 average at Thanksgiving in 2012, according
to AAA Wisconsin. However, like Memorial Day and the July Fourth
holiday, the number of travelers is expected to be down by more than 1
percent when compared to the previous year, said Gail Weinholzer, a AAA
Wisconsin spokeswoman.
“They’re just not that confident in the
economy,” Weinholzer said. “They’re playing it a bit more conservatively
around the holidays.”
Nationally, AAA estimates that 43.4 million
people will travel over the Thanksgiving weekend with 90 percent of
those travelers, or 38.9 million people, traveling by automobile. In
Wisconsin, more than 873,000 people are expected to travel, a 1.5
percent decrease compared to last year, according to the AAA forecast.
Of those, nearly 785,000 people plan to travel by auto and about 63,000
by air. The remainder will go by rail, bus or ship, Weinholzer said.
Wednesday
will be the busiest single day of travel with 37 percent of travelers
departing for trips. However, Wisconsin roadways buck the national trend
on Sunday. That day marks the end of the nine-day gun-deer season and
will result in thousands of hunters returning home from the woods mixed
with other holiday travelers.
One of the biggest congestion points
will be southbound on Interstate 39-90-94 near the Dane/Columbia county
line. Capt. Chuck Teasdale of the Wisconsin State Patrol’s southwest
region office in DeForest said if motorists can take alternate routes
home they can avoid slowdowns Sunday but admits that options can be
limited for many travelers.
“It’s really just sheer volumes,” Teasdale said. “We’ll work really diligently for advance warning if there are incidents.”
He
advised motorists to check the state’s website, www.511wi.gov, for
traffic alerts and changing weather conditions that could affect
traffic. The State Patrol also uses a “quick clearance” system to remove
crashes as quickly as possible out of the path of traffic and uses
electronic message boards along the Interstate system to let motorists
know about problems ahead.
Ed Townsend, a National Weather Service
meteorologist based in Sullivan, said travelers on Wednesday, Thursday
and Friday will be greeted with high temperatures that are below normal
in the mid-20s and lows in the teens. There is only a slight chance of
snow on Saturday and Sunday.
“We’ll have good travel conditions for Thanksgiving,” Townsend said.
That
won’t be the case for many travelers in the eastern part of the
country. A winter storm system is blamed for at least 12 fatal accidents
in the West, in Texas and two in Dane County and is pushing east.
Nearly
300 American Airlines and American Eagle flights were canceled in and
out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Monday because of the
weather, and some of the country’s busiest airports — in New York,
Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston and Charlotte, N.C. — could see
significant delays.
At the Dane County Regional Airport, where an
estimated 2,500 travelers were scheduled to depart on Wednesday, no
delays had been announced as of late Monday, said Brent McHenry, an
airport spokesman. He expects Wednesday to be like a Monday, which is
typically busy with business travelers, only Wednesday’s customers will
be traveling for the holiday.
The airport will offer TSA pre-check
for qualified travelers and a second security checkpoint will be open
from 4:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
“It’s business as
usual for us, and we’re not expecting any challenges or concerns,”
McHenry said. “We anticipate all day Wednesday to be busy with holiday
travel. Thursday morning will be busy with a lighter afternoon as many
airlines have reduced schedules.”
Read more:
http://host.madison.com/news/local/fewer-travelers-and-lower-gas-prices-for-thanksgiving/article_3eeeeca7-f485-543e-a04f-5227d1094921.html#ixzz2llqb8esB
Brought to you by:
