Thanksgiving rides home from UC Davis: plan it now
Thanksgiving is six weeks out. The busy days, the train, the airports, the Sunday back, and sharing the cost with people going your way.
Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 26. UC Davis lists the Thanksgiving Holiday as November 26–27 (UC Davis), a Thursday and a Friday, so most people get a long weekend with a Sunday at the end of it.
That is six weeks away, which feels early. It is not. The trip home is the easy half to picture. The trip back is the half that goes wrong. This is a plan for both, and most of it works with no app at all.
Know which days are crowded
Last year is the best guide to this year's pattern. For Thanksgiving 2025, AAA's traffic partner INRIX expected Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons to be the most congested before the holiday, put Wednesday's worst window at 11am to 8pm, and said people heading home on Sunday "should expect heavy traffic most of the day" (AAA). Its advice was to drive in the morning.
Airports follow the same shape. TSA expected more than 3 million people through its checkpoints on the Sunday after Thanksgiving 2025 alone, and projected it as one of the busiest travel days in its history (TSA).
Those are 2025 figures. The pattern is the useful part: leave in the morning if you can, and expect Sunday to be the hard day.
Bay Area: start with the train
For the Bay, the Capitol Corridor is the easy answer from Davis. It runs its weekend schedule on Thanksgiving Day and the day after, Thursday November 26 and Friday November 27, 2026 (Capitol Corridor). Reservations are not required, and you can buy a ticket at the station before you board (Capitol Corridor).
Look up the timetable for your exact day, not a typical one. The one posted today says it took effect December 8, 2025 (Capitol Corridor), and a holiday week is when a missed last train costs the most. We compared train, bus and car for the Bay in Davis to Berkeley or SF.
Flying: choose the airport by the ground leg
The flight is only part of the trip. Sacramento International is the closest airport to Davis, and Yolobus 42A and 42B run there every 30–60 minutes, seven days a week (Yolobus). On Thanksgiving Day the 42 runs a Sunday schedule, and on the Friday after it runs as normally scheduled (Yolobus).
From the Bay airports, OAK has the simplest link: BART from the airport to Coliseum takes about nine minutes (BART), and Oakland Coliseum–BART is a Capitol Corridor station (Capitol Corridor). SFO has the most flights and the longest ground leg. All four airports are side by side in SFO vs OAK vs SJC.
Each airport has a page on TAGO that shows how many people are heading that way: Sacramento International, SFO and, for Southern California, LAX.
Plan the Sunday back now
Most people sort the ride home and leave the return for later. Then later is a Sunday that everyone else is also travelling.
So do both now. If you are taking the train or the bus back, find the last departure on Sunday, November 29 that gets you to Davis, and write it down. If you are flying, pick a return flight with the ground leg in mind, not just the ticket. If you are riding with someone one way, settle how you are getting back before you leave.
For airports and other places on TAGO, the trip back sits in the same ask as the trip out: one ask carries two dates. For a general ride to a hometown, that is not the case, so post the return as its own trip.
Share the cost with people going your way
Cars will leave Davis in every direction that week, and most cars on any road have empty seats. A seat in one is a trip that was happening anyway, with the cost shared.
That is what TAGO is: a carpool for students. You sign in with your .edu email, post
where you are going and when, and see who else is going the same way. What a rider
contributes can never exceed the IRS standard mileage rate for the day of the trip. The
method is in how ride costs split. Routes and names
stay private until you sign in with your .edu.
Nothing guarantees a car or a seat on your date. It depends who is going, which is why six weeks out is the right time to post, not the Tuesday before. Settle the pickup point, the time, luggage and the cost in one thread, as in carpooling at UC Davis.
Driving home with empty seats? Read what changes when people ride along.
The six-week checklist
- Holiday: Thursday November 26 and Friday November 27. Back: Sunday November 29.
- Pick train, bus, flight or car for each direction.
- Leave in the morning if you can, on both ends.
- Write down Sunday's last train or bus to Davis.
- Post both trips now, the way out and the way back.