Best, Worst Thanksgiving 2019 Travel Times For NYC

NEW YORK CITY – Almost as important as choosing which pie to eat after your turkey dinner: When is the best time to try to get out of NYC for your holiday gathering?

As usual, the early Thanksgiving traveler will spend more time with family and less in standstill traffic. Those heading out of the city at 2 a.m. on Wednesday are predicted to have the smoothest trip, Google's traffic data analysis says.

But wait until 3 p.m. the same day and you're likely to be enjoying time on the road with strangers – that's what Google says will be the worst time to travel in the city.

On the way back home, 3 a.m. on Friday will be the quietest time, while Sunday at 3 p.m. is the time to avoid.

There's also a big traffic spike midday on Thursday, right after the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Google's data shows. And if you're going to a suburban mall for some Black Friday shopping, traffic that morning will be about the same as the usual Friday commute by car.

Google Maps used its data to identify when crowds tend to be the largest at popular holiday venues.

Bakeries, grocery stores and liquor stores all hit peak crowd levels between noon and midnight on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Movie theaters and shopping centers, though, have the most activity between noon and midnight on Black Friday.

To determine the best and worst times to drive on Thanksgiving, Google Maps analyzed data from the 2018 “Thanksgiving Holiday Period,” which included the Wednesday before Thanksgiving until the end of Sunday after the holiday.

The web mapping service found the volume of cars on the road at a given time during this period, and received the traffic information anonymously from Android users in 25 cities throughout the United States.

Check out Google's full breakdown of Thanksgiving data.