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WV Turnpike traffic up over holiday weekends

By PHIL KABLER

Charleston Gazette-Mail

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia Turnpike traffic continued an upward trend over the Christmas holidays, with traffic up 3.6 percent over the 2015 holiday travel period, and up 6.7 percent over 2011, the last time Christmas fell on a Sunday, Parkways Authority general manager Greg Barr said Tuesday.

“Any way we look at it, it’s a pretty strong increase in traffic,” he said.

The increase is part of an ongoing trend of more traffic on the Turnpike over holiday travel periods.

Thanksgiving holiday traffic was the highest in at least a decade, while the July 4 weekend saw near-record traffic. The one exception was Labor Day weekend, when Hurricane Hermine moved up the east coast from Florida to New York, prompting many to cancel travel plans.

Barr said the Christmas travel period benefited from relatively good weather, comparatively low gasoline prices, and a robust economy in the regions linked by the 88-mile interstate route.

“Weather didn’t hurt us,” he said. “Traffic was up, but there were no serious incidents of any kind that shut us down for any period of time.”

Barr said there was a single-vehicle wreck early Christmas morning and a car fire later that day, but neither incident caused notable traffic backups.

Unlike Thanksgiving, where traffic is concentrated on the Wednesday before the holiday and the Sunday after, Christmas holiday traffic tends to be spread out over the holiday travel period, which helped avoid congestion and back-ups at toll plazas, he said.

For the 2016 holiday, the day after Christmas was the busiest travel day, with about 145,000 toll transactions, and with about 141,000 transactions each day on the Thursday and Friday after Christmas, Barr said. By comparison, the Sunday after Thanksgiving saw a record 179,500 transactions.

Christmas day itself was the lightest travel day, with about 58,000 transactions.

For the six-day travel period, from Dec. 22-27, the Turnpike handled 688,000 toll transactions, up about 24,000 over Christmas 2015.

Barr said its notable that weather also was not a factor for the Christmas travel periods in 2015 and 2011, both of which experienced mild weather.

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