By Max Sinclair
Anyone who travels often for either business or for pleasure knows and understands that there are better seasonal times, better days of the week, and even better times of the day for making a trip.
On the flip side there are also horrible seasonal, horrible days of the week, and even horrible times of the day for making a trip. The funny thing is that is really does not matter what form of travel you happen to prefer, they are all equally plugged with fellow travelers.
Seasonal holidays (think of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's by way of example) are the absolute worst possible seasons for travel by far. There are more people that are traveling during these particular holiday seasons than at any other time of the year according to government statistics.
The American retail industry seems to relish times like Black Friday (the biggest sales day of the year right after Thanksgiving) to save the fiscal day for their companies in what appears to be a never ending fight to stay above water, and the travel related industries eagerly looks at these seasonal holidays for exactly the same reason.
The US highway system is jammed during Memorial Day and Labor Day, for example, are two more days that seem to get tons of traffic. The reason is pretty simple though, these happen to be the days that mark the beginning and end of summer so families want to start the summer off right or get in one more trip before it is back to school for kids. Oddly enough Valentine's Day and over the Easter holidays you get a spike in traffic as well due to people wanting to connect with others or attend services.
By an large, travel of in any form is a lot more difficult on weekends than on weekdays regardless of the season. State highway safety boards record that there is more traffic between Friday evening and Monday morning than at any other time of the week.
Airline companies report that there are more passengers on weekends as well, and likewise bus service lines and passenger trains say that there is a marked increase in people going to and fro.
Of note is that when you look at hotel and motel accommodation rates, they are generally higher on weekends because this gives them the needed boost to make up for the lack of business during the week.
If you expect to get into any nice places to eat or see a packed show, you should expect that the weekend is going to be the busiest time and plan accordingly.
The worst possible time to travel during the day is between 9 AM and 9 PM. You will find more traffic on the roads, most train services and airlines report that these too are also the times when passengers prefer to travel. Airfares also cost more during prime flight hours than they do red eye flights.
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