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A record number of people would be traveling for Thanksgiving this year, and motorists around Reagan National have criticized the airport's efforts to manage departure traffic at the end of the holiday weekend.
WASHINGTON – Appellants in the WTOP press room Sunday night criticized Reagan National Airport's efforts to manage Thanksgiving's departure traffic at the end of the holiday weekend.
WTOP Traffic Center
Many people were not prepared for the difficulty of welcoming their loved ones for a return flight.
WTOP traffic reporter Rob Stallworth began responding to calls from frustrated drivers early Sunday night.
"It's just the sheer number of vacationers who go to Reagan National at that time to get home," Stallworth said. "That's the cause of the problem. If several callers tell me that it takes them an hour, an hour and a half just to get out of the terminal garages, that's a problem. "
A caller, Steve from McLean, Virginia, said it was just the chance that allowed his passenger to take his flight.
"We had no extra budget, he had to run and barely caught his flight," said the appellant. "We were lucky to be able to sit in the garage of Terminal A and his flight was to the southwest. It still took me an hour and fifteen minutes to cross the airport and return to George Washington Parkway. "
Appellants complained of the existence of a strangulation bottleneck on the airport road where police were blocking the exit on George Washington Parkway, forcing drivers to make a U-turn along the airport road to exit on Highway 1.
Airport spokesman Rob Yingling, however, said he was unaware of any circumstance that would have caused the police to block this exit.
"We have a lot of police officers who control the traffic and regulate the flow to get as many people as possible this afternoon and this evening," Yingling told WTOP. Yingling said the traffic control officers were alternating the flow between cars leaving the arrival and departure levels of the airport in order to "maintain a uniform distribution".
Tracy Vargo of Potomac, Maryland, was laying her daughter off for her flight back to Michigan. He added that Google Maps had given them a poor estimate of the time it would take them to get to the point of disembarkation once they would have arrived at the airport grounds. He said that there was no warning that the exit on George Washington Parkway in a northerly direction would be closed.
"You do not know that it's closed until you get to the airport and that the exit is divided, and there's no way out," Vargo said. . "I did not understand what could have been so bad that they had to close the Parkway exit. It was probably my worst experience of airport traffic. We left with a lot of time and we did not rely on this type of backup. After filing it, the situation got worse, not better.
It appears, however, that drivers who had begun their return trip to the DC area earlier in the day on Interstate 95 fought well.
Theodore and Gina Holloway were among them and went to Baltimore after spending time with their family in North Carolina. Traffic has not been a major problem, but they say they expect it to change throughout the day and be happy to be close to home. They hope to arrive at Sunday service.
"I'm going to church, I'm going to change clothes now," Gina Holloway said as she rushed into the bathroom, adding that even a small traffic could keep her away from the church.
With their dog at the back, they plan to take him to the church.
"We are confident they will let us in," said Theodore Holloway. "It's time to go to church and thank God for his mercy."
Did you beat the traffic ?? Stop I-95 in Howard County, driven by people returning home after the holidays. @WTOP pic.twitter.com/B2DnvFcdMd
– Melissa Howell (@ Mhowell003) November 25, 2018
Isaac Daniels traveled to Maryland from South Carolina to return home to New York. He said that he had not encountered any traffic but that he left at 1 am just to be safe.
"I left at 1 o'clock instead of 6 o'clock as usual. Until then, I have almost arrived, "said Daniels.
Although he said he was ready to make backups once he got closer to New York, he still hoped it would be a silent home.
"I hope I'll get through once I get on the toll highway," he said.
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