The life of a traffic reporter is pretty routine. Every morning we get into work, and with minor changes day-to-day, we do the job the same way. Every day. Unless it's raining or snowing or there's ice on the roads, we can pretty much tell you when the roads will start to get slow. Traffic generally follows patterns and when you've been doing the job as long as we have, you get to know these patterns. Think about your daily commute. You generally know when you need to leave the house to get to work on time, and when you know you'll be late. Well, that's essentially what we do. We just do it for every one's commute.
There's really only one day a year when we throw out our traffic model and do the job an entirely different way. That day is this Friday.
This Friday, affectionately known as "Black Friday" by retailers around the country, is the one morning rush hour of the year when traffic reporters shift their focus from the freeways to parking lots. Yes, parking lots.
Since most people are off from work this Friday, the only commuters are folks heading out early to do some Black Friday shopping. As a result, traffic reporters are obliged to switch from covering traffic on the highways to the capacity of parking lots at shopping centers.
It's a weird morning to be a traffic reporter. Imagine that you make pizzas for a living. Every day of the year you make pizzas. It's your specialty. Then on one specific Friday a year, you don't make pizza, you make hamburgers. That will be me on Friday. I'll be making hamburgers instead of pizza.
So, how does the job change? Well, first Doug Turnbull, my trusty right-hand man in the WSB Traffic Center, will start calling malls early Friday morning checking on what capacity of their parking lots are filled. It's a weird conversation because this might be the only time of the year anyone ever calls the mall and asks how many parking spots they have available.
Then at around 6:30 a.m. we send the traffic chopper up to check from the sky which malls have the most and least parking spots available. It truly is a unique morning. Our focus turns from the commuter to the shopper.
If you are a shopper that plans to head out early on Friday morning, recent history shows us that parking spots disappear quickly at the big box stores first. Think WalMart, Target, Toys R Us, etc...
As it gets later in the morning the mall lots really begin to fill up. By 8 a.m. most malls are at about 80-90 percent capacity and if you will probably have to walk quite a way from your car to the mall once you find a spot.
If you want to help us report on the parking situations on Friday, we'd love to hear from you. You can call the WSB Traffic Center directly at 404-897-7358 or #750 on Verizon Wireless phones.
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