The RAC is predicting that 14.1 million leisure journeys will be made on UK roads between Friday 17 and Sunday 19 July – the highest mid-July volume since pandemic-distorted 2022 figures. A protracted heatwave, combined with anxiety over air-travel disruption in the Gulf and potential EU border delays, is persuading many families and an increasing number of corporate road-warriors to opt for domestic trips. Saturday is forecast to be the peak, with 3.8 million trips, but Dover and Folkestone traffic is also expected to surge as motorists head for continental ferries and Le Shuttle services. Port authorities say they have “done absolutely everything” to prepare, yet admit that partial activation of the EU’s Entry-Exit System for cars could produce screening bottlenecks at peak hours. National Highways has placed extra traffic officers on the M20 and activated Operation Brock contraflow barriers as a precaution. For businesses the knock-on effects include potential delays to time-critical deliveries and to field engineers scheduled for Monday starts. Mobility managers are advising assignees arriving by ferry to travel the day before and to build contingency time into hotel and car-hire bookings. With temperatures topping 30 °C for an eleventh consecutive day, there are also duty-of-care considerations around driver fatigue. Rail operators have announced speed restrictions on key inter-city routes because heat can buckle steel tracks. That could funnel yet more travellers onto the road network, especially where domestic flights have been thinned out by jet-fuel rationing. The Automobile Association recommends that drivers carry at least two litres of water per person and warns that breakdown response times could double on the busiest corridors. Although primarily a domestic-mobility story, the surge underlines how international border friction can reshape travel patterns inside the UK – a dynamic global assignment planners must consider when scheduling relocations that require long highway transfers from arrival airports.
Source: ITV News
