A long Good Friday looms for many drivers and rail passengers who are heading off for a UK getaway, as the Easter weekend collides with the start of school holidays, engineering works and turbulent weather.
With more than 14 million leisure trips planned by drivers over the coming days, motorists have been warned to expect delays on many routes. Additional cars could be forced on to the roads because of major railway line closures, with strikes hampering possible return train journeys next week.
According to the RAC, some car journeys could take twice as long as normal as many schools are breaking up at the start of the bank holiday weekend this year, leading to an increase in getaway traffic.
Meanwhile, all trains in and out of London Euston on the west coast mainline to cities including Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow will be cancelled from Friday to Monday, with passengers wishing to travel diverted via rail replacement buses to Milton Keynes.
Getaway hell was expected to kick off on Thursday afternoon, with the biggest potential for gridlock coming from the south-east after 2pm with many schools closing at lunchtime.
With normal commuter journeys contributing to the traffic, the RAC and transport analysts Inrix forecast peak jams between 4pm and 5pm on the western flank of the M25 motorway between the M1 north and the M23 for Gatwick, including the turnoffs for the west and south-west. A usual one-hour drive on that stretch of the London orbital motorway is expected to take 2 hours 10 minutes or more, they predict.
Most long car journeys are expected to be made on Good Friday, with the lengthiest delays likely between 11am and 3pm. Two popular routes for holidaymakers – the M5 southbound between Bristol and Taunton and M3 between the M25 and the south coast – could take twice as long as usual.
One curveball is the British bank holiday weather, with changeable sun and rain either luring or deterring more in the coming days. The worst was forecast by the Met Office for Thursday afternoon, including strong winds and heavy rain at times, with a yellow warning for wind across the south of England.
The RAC Breakdown spokesperson Alice Simpson said: “If you do need to travel between the busiest hours of 2pm and 7pm, keep speeds appropriate to the conditions and leave plenty of extra stopping distance.”
She said anyone who could delay leaving until later on Thursday or set off as early as possible on Good Friday was likely to have a better journey, but lengthy queues could be expected.
Network Rail meanwhile has advised train passengers to check their journey details with £90m worth of engineering works scheduled to land awkwardly on the getaway plans of anyone fleeing London for the north in the coming days.
As well as the west coast mainline closure south of Milton Keynes, there will be disruption and closures around Glasgow and Huddersfield.
Network Rail’s network strategy director, Lawrence Bowman, said: “There’s never a good time to do the work we need to do but the four days of the bank holiday, when fewer people are travelling, give us the opportunity to do major work we couldn’t do in normal weekend.”
Rolling 24-hour rail strikes next week from 5 to 8 April by drivers in the Aslef union will halt most long-distance trains in Britain next Friday or Saturday, further hampering potential train holidays. The strikes affect different companies on different days but firms affected include Avanti West Coast, East Midlands Railway and CrossCountry on 5 April and GWR, LNER, Northern and TransPennine on 6 April.
Tourist board VisitEngland said around 11 million people in the UK are nonetheless planning an overnight Easter trip, generating an estimated £3.2bn boost to the economy.
Two million of us are, however, not taking that chance, according to travel association Abta, heading overseas instead. The somewhat balmier Canary Islands, mainland Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Turkey are the most popular destinations for foreign travel.
The Port of Dover has warned holidaymakers they may face delays due to tighter French border security after the Moscow concert attack, including controls in Dover before passengers board cross-Channel ferries. About 20,000 cars are expected to travel through the port this weekend.
