From a starkly utilitarian building lodged between the coal heaps and salt piles of industrial Canton, Rebecca Pindell will have the best seat in town today to view the traffic mess on Maryland's highways on the busiest travel day of the year.
Pindell will be watching the passing parade at the state's toll facilities and other roads on a bank of TV screens at the Maryland Transportation Authority's operations center at the Fort McHenry Tunnel.
And if anything interrupts the free flow of traffic on the three bay crossings around Baltimore, she will be poised to send help instantly.
The authority's refurbished operations center is part of the behind-the-scenes infrastructure of transportation in Maryland that is put to the test each year on the day before Thanksgiving.
This year, AAA Mid-Atlantic is cautiously projecting a small decline in highway traffic volume from last year.
The organization is being cautious because its projection is based on a survey of drivers' intentions conducted last month - when gasoline prices were almost double their current levels.
Ragina Averella, a spokeswoman for AAA, said that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving continues to be the most congested travel day of the year - closely followed by the Sunday after the holiday. But she said more people appear to be traveling early to avoid those peak days.
"People are definitely spreading it out more and more," Averella said.
At Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, officials were expecting about 77,500 passengers to pass through the terminals today and about 79,500 Sunday. The average daily passenger traffic is 57,000.
BWI spokesman Jonathan Dean said the airport's forecast of 486,000 travelers for the week ending Monday amounts to a 2 1/2 percent drop from last year's Thanksgiving week. He noted that some airlines have cut flights under pressure from a slowing economy.
Dean said there is no need for travelers to arrive earlier than the 90 minutes ahead of departure usually recommended for domestic flights.
"BWI operates really very efficiently. The security checkpoints seem to move well even on busy holiday periods," he said.
Amtrak was expecting to carry 128,000 passengers in the United States today, 65 percent more than an average Wednesday. Based on strong reservations figures, it was expecting no drop-off from its ridership of 665,000 during last year's Thanksgiving week.
