Earlier this week we examined how air travel fared during Thanksgiving 2024 (short answer: flat for the last 4 years): https://advanresearch.com/air-travel-steady-during-thanksgiving
But as we all know, the other favorable method of travel for Americans is the symbol of freedom: the automobile. Traditionally, Thanksgiving week was the most traffic jammed travelled period of the year. How did this and prior years fare?
To get a full picture, here we compare the miles travelled for the whole week, from Saturday before Thanksgiving until Sunday after Thanksgiving, versus the miles traveled for each year (excluding December, for which we don’t have 2024 data yet), so we can see not only the absolute but also the relative trends vs what happens throughout the year.
And the picture is very clear. The drivers have spoken – we’d rather fly.
In this first graph we see the absolute index values. We have a clear drop this year, and a downward trend starting in 2021.
More importantly, this is in contrast to the growth in miles driven every year since 2021, including 2024 YTD. Clearly, the drivers have had enough of the traffic during this week to take a pause. Or maybe we are seeing some inflation pressures on travel.
Side note: what’s with the 2021 spike? The Federal numbers of miles driven does not show that. But, take a look at the US gasoline prices. We posit that money talks: higher prices indicate higher demand, and this is a better measure than how many miles Americans actually drive, than the Fed’s estimates. (the gasoline prices are also coming from a federal agency, mind you, but it is much easier to measure these). Note how the gasoline prices below mirror our measured mileage above:
Continuing on our Thanksgiving driving theme, here are the same graphs on a year-over-year comparison, for easier analysis. During Thanksgiving week only:
And on a year to date basis:
Conclusion: we can all take only so much road traffic before we call it quits! And, considering the other main mode of transportation (air travel) was flat this Thanksgiving, StayCation has been winning this year!
