Thanksgiving 2025 could be the busiest of all time.
The experts at AAA predict roughly 81.8 million people will travel more than 50 miles by road or sky this holiday, nearly 1.6 million more than the previous record from last year.
Thanksgiving is the single-busiest travel holiday of the year.
“Thanksgiving travel numbers are always impressive because this holiday has become synonymous with heading out of town to spend time with loved ones,” Stacey Barber, Vice President of AAA Travel, said in a press release. “People are willing to brave the crowds and make last-minute adjustments to their plans to make lifelong memories, whether it’s visiting extended family or meeting up with friends.”
A whopping 73 million people will travel by car. That is close to 90% of all Turkey Day travelers and higher than last year by 1.3 million. Many folks are still nervous about lingering flight disruptions from the now-resolved government shutdown, AAA claims.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving tends to be the busiest for car rentals and for traffic on the I-70 mountain corridor, averaging close to 44,000 cars in one day. Thanksgiving last year was the busiest in history on I-70 with 159,165 cars in four days (Thursday through Sunday).
So far this year weekend traffic on I-70 has been trailing last year. CDOT has not yet released a local travel forecast for Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving Weekend on I-70 (Thurs-Sun)
2024… 159,165 vehicles
2023… 134,890 vehicles
2022… 154,545 vehicles
2021… 155,608 vehicles
2020… 135,787 vehicles
2019… ~148,000 vehicles
