Christmas chaos on the roads: avoid these dates if you can!
The RAC has forecast ‘getaway gridlock’ for the festive season, with a record 29.3 million trips planned in the run-up to Christmas Day – the highest rate of holiday travel since 2013.
It’s reckoned that up to half the planned journeys will be made over the coming weekend, and the RAC says that the fact Christmas falls in midweek is likely to generate “an extended period of pre-Christmas panic on the roads”, with 5.7m trips on Wednesday and Thursday.
Things get potentially more serious on Friday 20 December, when 3m trips are predicted, while the RAC has dubbed Saturday 21 December “snarl-up Saturday” with 3.7 million car journeys already planned. Traffic will be a little lighter on Sunday 22 December with 2.9m journeys, but the organisation says its research suggests an additional 4.7m journeys will also be taken at some point between 20-22 December by drivers who haven’t yet decided specifically when to travel.
The worst day to travel is predicted to be Christmas Eve, when 3.8m car journeys are planned on top of what the RAC calls “the final flurries of commuter traffic”, while a further 2.5m are said to be planning trips on either 23 or 24 December, but haven’t yet decided when to go.
Christmas getaway traffic predictions
20 December: evening rush hour hot-spots, expect long delays
- M25/M3 junction
- M25 anticlockwise M1 to M23
- M53 Chester to Liverpool
20/21 December
- Heaviest traffic between 1pm and 7pm
- Early or late starts recommended
26/27 December
- Heaviest traffic on major roads between 10am-3pm
Adding to concerns about the Christmas getaway are plans for engineering works on railways into London, and near Crewe and Cambridge, that could create a lot of additional traffic across the north-west and east of England.
It’s not all bad news, though. The RAC reports that Highways England will be removing roadworks on 95 per cent of the roads it manages.
