Memorial Day weekend expected to have nearly 43M American travelers
Memorial Day is just around the corner — and nearly 43 million Americans have their eyes set on traveling over the long weekend.
The holiday is expected to draw “the second-highest travel volume on record,” only falling behind 2005, since the company started monitoring holiday travel volumes, AAA said in a news release on Wednesday.
“Overall, an additional 1.5 million more people will take to the nation’s roads, rails and runways compared with last year, a 3.6% increase,” AAA said.
Roughly 37.6 million travelers are expected to travel by car to their destinations, according to the company. That figure is the highest-recorded for Memorial Day and up 3.5 percent from 2018.
The second-most common mode of transportation was planes, with 3.25 million expected passengers, followed by trains, buses and cruise ships which have a combined anticipated 1.9 million travelers — a 3.8 percent increase from the previous year, AAA said.
Memorial Day is just around the corner and AAA on Wednesday said nearly 43 million Americans have their eyes set on traveling over the long weekend. (iStock)
The company, citing transportation analytics company Inrix, said drivers should expect heavy congestion.
“Several major U.S. metros could experience double the travel times compared to a normal trip, while New Yorkers and Washington, D.C., could see three times the delay,” AAA warned.
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The company also laid out the top 10 U.S. travel destinations for Memorial Day, according to advance AAA travel bookings.
- Orlando, Fla.
- New York City
- Las Vegas
- Honolulu
- Anaheim, Calif.
- Seattle
- Phoenix
- Anchorage, Alaska
- Tampa, Fla.
- San Francisco, Calif.
This year’s Memorial Day travel projection is “based on economic forecasting and research by IHS Markit, a London-based business information provider," AAA said. The “holiday travel period” was considered to run from May 23 to May 27.