Monday Morning Traffic to Laguardia from NW CT
 

Hi, We are heading to Laguardia on a Monday morning (October 10th) for an 11:45am flight. We are parking at one of the long term lots (probably the ProPark America at Marriott?) and then shuttle to airport. I am concerned how long it will take due to traffic. According to Bing it is 2.5 hours with little traffic on 684. I am thinking I should leave around 5:30am to make it there in time. Any suggestions or information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I would go down and spend the night on Sunday night. If you miss your flight because of traffic, you will be out of luck.
Here is a scenario-we left CT on Friday for NYC, a drive that should have taken us 2 hours under normal circumstances or maybe 3 with afternoon traffic-it took us 5 hours.
Not too sure what the 684 is but, whatever you do, do not take the Van Wyck. Take the Cross Island Parkway.

Neither the Van Wyck (I-678) nor the Cross Island Parkway goes anywhere LaGuardia airport - peraps odie was thinking JFK airport instead.

No need to leave CT the night before - I think you will have plenty of time to get to the airport for a noon flight.

684 to the Hutch will be busy at rush hour, and you may also hit some traffic near Danbury if you are through there around 8am.

The three bottlenecks are a) where 684 turns into the Hutch, b) at exit 13, where the cross county parkway merges, and c) at the Whitestone bridge.

If you have an EZ Pass it'll save you time crossing the Whitestone Bridge.

You are right J62, I was thinking JFK...sorry for that!

I would still go down the night before. Take a look at the traffic maps right now-granted it is raining-but it is a huge mess. I guess my question would be if you missed the flight, how disastrous could it be for you? There is a lot that can go wrong on a drive to New York.
Also, do you have precheck or are you at the mercy of the security lines? Are you checking bags? Just some things to take into consideration.

The difficulty now at LGA is construction as much as traffic into and out of the city. Mondays are typically the busiest days of the week, and traffic into the airport can actually back up just because of the narrow lanes into and out of the airport.

I went on Sunday afternoon, and it was clear sailing aside from the traffic, but the airport has typically posted that there are much bigger problems on weekdays, especially in the morning and afternoon rush hours. The last traffic alert was on Wednesday, September 21, but there have been times when things were almost at a standstill. But that's not always the case and fairly hard to predict. I just want you to be aware that this might add 30 or so minutes onto your trip on a bad day (and that would even affect the shuttle from an off-site parking lot).

Be especially sure that you have reserved a spot if you plan to park at LGA. Airport parking is extremely limited now that the largest garage on site is being demolished (not to mention one of the parking lots), and everything is filling up early.

Given the extremely limited parking at LGA and the difficulty of find any other places to put the car I would consider using a car service versus driving your own car. You don't say how long you will be parking your car - but if it's more than 3 or 4 days you may find that taking a car service is not much more expensive and will cut possibly an hour off your trip (circling around trying to find a place willing to take your car.)

The OP is not coming from NYC but from NW Connecticut, a distance of over 100 miles. A car service would cost hundreds of dollars and is just not realistic, even if such a service were available, which I doubt it is.

Most towns in CT have shuttles to the NYC airports and often take more than one set of passengers - which can reduce price. I would check it out before killing the idea out of hand.