NORTH CAROLINA – Expect more cars on the roads this weekend compared to non-holiday weekends and compared to recent years past.

“We do expect drive travel to be up 1.5 percent compared to last year,” AAA Carolinas public relations manager, Angela Daley says. “That’s really due to lower gas prices—gas prices have come down about 37 cents from a few months ago—and also the slowly improving economy.”

She says the improvement isn’t quite the jump that travel has seen in years past.

“Especially coming out of the recession, we saw a jump saw of five percent—so something more significant,” Daley says.

Additionally, Daley says the later in the week it got, the more people were making up their mind that traveling was looking like a good idea.

“You’ll see a lot of last minute travelers who maybe quite weren’t sure that they might be traveling this weekend choose to go because the weather forecast is great for this weekend,” Daley says.

Air travel continues to fall in North Carolina and nationally. Daley says people continue to move away from the more expensive route and are spending more time in cars.

“It was down last year, and we’re seeing it fall down a little this year as well,” Daley says. “More people will be taking to the roads. We’re seeing more people drive longer distances. The average miles traveled this holiday is 737 miles; that includes air and driving. That’s come up from 570 miles last year.

 

AAA Carolinas