ATLANTA – Your Halloween ride home may come disguised as an earlier, even heavier rush hour.
It’s all about timing.
Commuter Dude Jerry Carnes looked at traffic data from the Georgia Department of Transportation that compares last Halloween’s traffic to a typical October day, and found an earlier than normal ride home on just about every popular corridor.
On I-75 traveling north through Cobb County, last year’s Halloween traffic peaked at 4:30 p.m., and never got as heavy as a normal ride home.
On the Connector northbound through downtown Atlanta, Halloween traffic peaked at 3:15p.m., in 2016. That’s three hours earlier than a normal October ride home.
On I-85 through Gwinnett County, last year’s Halloween traffic peaked at 4:30 p.m. It started dropping off at 5 p.m., when traffic is typically starting to build.
On I-20 traveling toward Conyers, last year’s Halloween traffic peaked at 4:30 p.m., and didn't start to drop off until 5:15.
Traffic on Ga 400 is always a fright. On a typical day, the worst of the traffic is at 6:15 p.m., when it takes about 20-minutes to go from I-285 to Holcomb Bridge Road. On Halloween Day last year, that same 11-mile drive took 30 minutes, and the peak of the evening rush that came at 5:15 pm.
I-285 SB through Dekalb is the lone acceptation to the Halloween traffic rule. Traffic there peaked at 5:15 p.m., which is later than a typical October day when volume peaks at 4:45 p.m.
