1.2 million Virginians expected to travel on Memorial Day weekend
PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — The region is not only getting back to pre-pandemic holiday travel levels, it is expected to surpass those numbers, according to AAA.
AAA expects this to be the second busiest Memorial Day travel season since they started tracking in 2000.
“For the past couple of years, the bar of comparison has been us creeping closer and closer and closer to being where we were pre-pandemic,” Ryan Adcock with AAA Tidewater said.
It is a gradual rebuild on holiday traffic since the pandemic era — poised to make the entire summer travel season a busy one. As for the Memorial Day holiday weekend, AAA projects 1.2 million travelers in Virginia, with the vast majority going behind the wheel.
Gas prices in Hampton Roads are just a hair below the national average as of Thursday, hovering around $3.40 a gallon. The state average was at $3.47 and the national average was at around $3.62 per gallon.
Local gas prices leading into Memorial Day weekend
The region is already well known for its traffic jams and crowded bridge tunnels on regular days. So Adcok urges drivers to beat the crowds by leaving early in the morning and outside of commute hours. Even with this, he urges travelers to plan for extra drive time.
“Especially down here as well, you’ll have those people that are traveling for the holiday weekend as well as just people commuting to and from work as well,” Adcock said. “So that holiday traffic mixed on top of what is a pretty strenuous traffic situation down here in general is could be a formula for potentially some long travel times.”
For anyone flying this weekend, Adcock recommends heading to the airport earlier than usual. This means planning extra time for the security lines, and for dealing with traffic on the way there.
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