Easter travel: drivers warned of 'carmageddon' with 14 million journeys over bank holiday and school break

Drivers are being warned ahead of time that long delays may plague their Easter getaway plans with more than 14 million trips expected to take place over the break.

The RAC fired the warning to commuters ahead of the bank holidays weekend, which will lead into a two-week break for most schools in the UK. The group has predicted a huge surge in traffic over the period, with families up and down the country heading off on holiday.

VisitEngland has predicted that around 11 million people in the UK are planning an Easter trip involving at least one overnight stay, generating £3.2bn for the economy. However, the RAC and transport analysis company Inrix warned that this number could be higher.

Their survey showed that at least 2.6m car journey will be made on Good Friday (March 29), with a further 2.3m to be made on both Saturday (March 30) and Sunday (March 31). A further two million journeys are expected ton take place on both Thursday (March 28) and Easter Monday (April 1), with an additional 3.3m getaways planned for some other point during the two-week school break, bringing the expected total to 14.5m journeys.

The RAC has said that Thursday between 2pm and 7pm is expected to have the worst congestion, with those heading off on holiday sharing the road with regular commuters. The M25 between the M23 for Gatwick and the M1 for Hertfordshire is expected to be the busiest route, with journeys on the motorway from 4pm expected to take over two hours - twice as long as the normal travel time.

Good Friday is expected to see a build up in congestion between 11am and 3pm on the most popular routes, with drivers advised to either set off early or delay their departure. RAC Breakdown spokesperson Alice Simpson said: “With Easter falling earlier than usual at the start of the school holidays, it could be carmageddon for holidaymakers.

“Anyone who can delay leaving on Thursday until much later in the evening or set off as early as possible on Good Friday is likely to have a better journey than those who travel during the peak periods of the day. Lengthy queues can be expected along routes to the usual hotspots like the West Country, the Lake District and the south coast, especially during the middle of the day when most people make trips.”

There's not much more good news for rail travellers, with Network Rail firing a warning ahead of the busy period due to engineering works on some major routes. The West Coast Main Line between London Euston and Milton Keynes will be shut for four days from Good Friday, while there will also be disruption near Glasgow and Huddersfield.

Network Rail’s network strategy director Laurence 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. We’ve got 493 different pieces of work taking place this Easter, most happening overnight, including laying over 8,000 metres of new rail and putting down over 40,000 tonnes of new ballast to support the tracks.”