A record breaking amount of travelers are expected to be on the roads, rails and in the air after 4th of July weekend in the U.S.
AAA is estimating more than 70 million people are traveling 50 miles or more for the long holiday weekend, with the vast majority of them driving home on Sunday.
The busiest travel day of the season may be compounded by yesterday’s AMTRAK shutdown and the ongoing Sumner Tunnel closure.
A power outage forced Amtrak to halt service between Penn Station in New York and South Station for most of the day yesterday. Normal service resumed around 9:45 last night, but this really threw a wrench into people’s travel plans.
“I’m like devastated. Kinda. But I know these things happen and its out of our control but I want to go home. But I gotta go back to where I came from now.” said Marlane Jones
AAA also says the worst time to drive today is between 2 and 8 p.m. The best is before 11 and tomorrow you will want to avoid the roads between 1 and 5 p.m. Better to head out after 7 p.m.
Gas prices are about 3 cents cheaper than this time last year at around $3.50 on average – almost thirty cents less than the gas prices in Newton, MA.
An estimated 3.7 million people are also expected to fly on Sunday and Monday, followed by around 3.5 million flying home on Tuesday, according to Hopper.
Meanwhile, the Sumner Tunnel is closed for the second summer in a row. It shutdown at midnight Friday and will stay that way until August fifth for a $160 million dollar renovation project.
About 39,000 drivers use the tunnel every day, especially people north of the city who need to get to and from Logan Airport. The state’s department of transportation is encouraging people to take public transit instead.
During the shutdown, the T, commuter rail bus and ferry are either discounted or free.