The upcoming Easter holidays could see over half the UK’s population take to the road, forecourt operators are warned.
Data from the RAC shows that even before we get to Easter itself, the roads will be busy: 21 million leisure journeys are predicted to be made between Friday, April 4, when the schools break, and Monday, April 7.
With official government data showing average car occupancy rates for holidays and day trips standing at two people (against an overall average of 1.5), it’s realistic to expect 42 million of us to be utilising the road network this weekend and the two days either side of it – over half the population will be out and about, in other words, so forecourts can expect a respective upswing in trade.
EV chargepoint firm Gridserve, meanwhile, expects that the busiest time for its Electric Highway public chargers, which feature prominently at motorway service areas, is between 11am and 1pm. It expects its chargers to be 20% quieter at 9am, and at 3pm.
Welcome Break is also predicting hectic roads over the Easter period and has drilled down into which areas likely to see the most traffic. Birchanger on the M11, Oxford on the M40, and Fleet South on the M3 are set to be the busiest Welcome Break services in the country, followed by South Mimms and Warwick South
The motorway services firm says 300,000 people are likely stop at its sites on Friday, April 11 alone, with seven million customers pulling in over the two-week school-holiday period.
