Maine Turnpike Authority prepares for busy holiday travel weekend

PORTLAND (WGME) — Roads were busy Wednesday with plenty of people coming to Vacationland, but there could be even more traffic in the days ahead, even after the holiday.

For many, this trip is a special occasion to look forward to.

“I’m hoping to do everything I like to do at Maine, like go to Reny’s and go to the candy store and stuff like that,” Walker Burr, who is traveling from Burlington, VT, said.

“This is a family tradition every year. We have large groups of family get together and we eat a lot of lobster rolls,” Jeff Fishman, who is traveling from Acton, MA, said.

“Yeah we’re really excited for the fresh lobster,” Maya Burr, who is traveling from Burlington, VT, said.

Some are traveling hundreds of miles to get to their final destination.

“We are traveling up to Castine, Maine, where we go every year to my aunt and uncle’s house,” Heidi Traeger, who is from New Hampshire, said. “It’s a fun little town on the coast to go and celebrate the Fourth.”

So far, the trip has been easier than expected.

“We left early and it was very smooth sailing,” Fishman said.

“The Fourth of July is always a tricky one to predict in terms of how much traffic we’re going to see,” Maine Turnpike Authority Director of Communications and Government Relations Erin Courtney said.

Where other holidays like Labor Day or Thanksgiving fall on the same day of the week every year, Independence Day does not.

“With it falling on Thursday, we think that today will be a busier than a normal Wednesday,” Courtney said.

Some people may be planning to come up Friday for the weekend, so drivers should expect the turnpike to be busy again, especially northbound.

Adding to the challenge of setting expectations, the MTA is also seeing changing travel habits overall.

“Traffic has been trending about 5.5 percent over last year,” Courtney said.

Numbers from Memorial Day weekend pointed to people potentially extending their vacations, which may be driven by new possibilities with remote work.

“They may be able to stay a little longer so we’re seeing a little shift,” Courtney said.

That also means not as much of a surge to leave the state all at once. Still, the turnpike does expect Sunday will be much busier than others in July.