Travel to be busiest since 2005

ALBANY — Memorial Day weekend is the traditional start of the summer travel season that continues through Labor Day weekend. This one is expected to be one of the busiest in recent memory, experts are predicting.

AAA Travel officials are projecting that more than a half-million more Americans will travel at least 50 miles from home over the long weekend that started Thursday and ends at midnight Monday.

“A long and unusually harsh winter gave many Americans the travel bug,” said Mark Jenkins, spokesman for AAA – The Auto Club Group. “Combine rising temperatures with signs of an improving economy, and travel for the holiday should hit a new post-recession high.”

In all, AAA Travel expects 36.1 million Americans to travel over the five-day period compared to 35.5 million last year. That would be the heaviest Memorial Day travel since the recession started in 2007.

Closer to home, AAA predicts that 1 million Georgians will join the travel, with 926,000, or 92.6 percent, driving. The group said that 76,564 Georgians are expected to fly this weekend, while another 34,040 will travel by other means, such as by bus, rail or a cruise ship.

Nationally, the lion’s share of travel also will be on the road, with 31.8 million, or 88 percent, expected to be on the highways. Another 2.6 million, 7.2 percent, will fly, while the rest will travel by other means. The other means category will see the biggest uptick from last year at 6.5 percent, though all three categories will be up from 2013.

If the forecast holds, AAA officials say this weekend will have the second highest volume of travel since 2000, exceeded only by 2005, and will end up 2.6 percent above the 10-year average for the holiday weekend.

Travelers can also expect to spend more this weekend. Airfares are about 6 percent higher, mid-range hotels are up 2 percent and car rentals are costing 1 percent more, AAA said.

AAA forecasters had expected a year-to-year break at the gas pump, but the slow decline in cost may mean fueling up will be a bit more than in 2013.

“Even still,” Jenkins said, “gas prices at these levels are not enough to keep people from traveling during the holiday.”

Early Thursday as the travel period opened, the national average for a gallon of regular-grade gas was $3.649, 1.1 cent below last year, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report.

Georgia motorists were looking at an average of $3.626, below the national average but significantly higher than the $3.464 that Peach State motorists were paying in 2013.

Metro Albany motorists, however, were seeing a relative bargain compared to the rest of Georgia and the U.S. While a gallon of gas Thursday morning was 7.6 cents higher than it was last Memorial Day weekend, at $3.486 it was well below both the state and national averages and it was the lowest of the eight Georgia metro areas that AAA monitors.

Florida, a popular destination for those in the Albany area during a holiday weekend, was only slightly higher than Georgia at $3.63 Thursday.