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Whether you’re getting a head start on your summer vacation or leaving town this weekend for a quick getaway, the Automobile Club of Southern California is warning travelers that this Memorial Day holiday will be a busy one, especially so on local freeways.
While most Memorial Day travel will be by car, all forms of transportation, be it by plane, cruise ship or train, will be up compared to the year before and quite a bit higher than in 2019, before the start of the pandemic.
“Consumers continue to prioritize travel with family and friends after the pandemic,” said Jena Miller, the Auto Club’s vice president of travel products. “This year, they will get some price relief at the gas pump, car rental counter, and when flying internationally, but they will spend more on domestic flights, hotels, cruises and tours compared to 2024.”
A record 3.6 million Southern Californians are expected to travel over the holiday period, which starts Thursday and ends the Monday, marking the third consecutive year of record-breaking travel locally for Memorial Day, according to the Auto Club. That’s a 3.6% increase over the same holiday period last year and an even bigger increase — 7.7% — over 2019.
The majority of those traveling will be doing so by car — 2.6 million — but the biggest increase compared with last year will be getaways via a cruise ship, bus or train. While it’s still a small proportion of travelers — 260,000 — their numbers are up by more than 9% compared with the same holiday period in 2024, the Auto Club reports.
“The cruise industry has really exploded and that’s probably one of the primary drivers of the increase,” said Auto Club spokesperson Marie Montgomery. “The cruise lines have additional offerings and sailings, so there’s definitely increased capacity and people are grabbing them up.”
San Diego’s cruise season ended earlier this month, but ships continue to sail out of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
While train travel is always a popular option for Memorial Day weekend, for San Diegans and other Southern Californians, it might be a little less so this year. That’s because a portion of the coastal route between Oceanside and Irvine remains closed due to a six-week project involving emergency work to stabilize the railroad tracks at San Clemente.
The Auto Club is predicting 382,000 Southern Californians will be traveling to their holiday destinations by air. Nationwide, there’s expected to be 45.1 million travelers, up 3.1% compared with the year before.
A key point to remember for airline passengers is that they’ll need to comply with a newly effective requirement to present a Real ID for domestic travel. If you have not yet obtained a Real ID driver’s license, a passport is also an acceptable form of identification. Because the requirement is still new, TSA agents are giving passengers some latitude in complying, although they will be subject to additional questioning to verify their identity.
Motorists would be wise to carefully time the start of their travel, if possible, given that the late afternoon and early evening hours on Friday promise to be the most congested times on freeways. The Auto Club’s data tool for predicting peak congestion in San Diego identifies Friday at 6:30 p.m. to be the worst — for outbound travel to Palm Springs via Interstate 15 north to state Route 91. It’s estimated that the drive to Palm Springs will take more than four hours — a 65% increase over the normal travel time, said Montgomery.
Coming in second, she says, is travel from San Diego to Los Angeles on Friday at 5:15 p.m. If you’re on the road then, the trip will take 3-1/2 hours, about 40% longer than usual.
Montgomery, like many, will be extending her holiday period past Memorial Day, in part, to avoid heavy congestion on the roads.
“With the train not fully operating, that will put additional pressure on the I-5 freeway so in general if you can make an early start of it that’s always going to be the best policy,” Montgomery said. “We’re going with visitors to the Grand Canyon this weekend but we’re leaving on Sunday and we might go to Sedona on Monday and Grand Canyon on Tuesday and come back on Wednesday.”
While gasoline prices are still high, they’re not nearly as high as they were last year at this time.
Memorial Day weekend a year ago, San Diegans were paying $5.20 a gallon, compared to $4.81 on Tuesday, Montgomery said.
Before taking off on their holiday journeys, motorists are advised to inspect their vehicles’ tires, battery, and fluid levels. Nationwide, AAA expects to rescue more than 378,000 stranded drivers at the roadside, which includes more than 95,000 in California.
As is frequently the case, the most popular destinations for Southern Californians this holiday weekend will be Las Vegas, San Diego, the Central Coast and nearby national parks such as the Grand Canyon.
Nationally, AAA has identified Orlando, Seattle, New York, Las Vegas, and Miami as heavily traveled places to visit. And internationally, the top-ranked destinations for U.S. travelers are Rome, Vancouver, Paris, London and Athens.
Because Memorial Day weekend tends to be the unofficial start of the summer vacation season, many people plan their travel around this time of period because of the extra day off, Montgomery said.
“The holiday is still technically considered the shoulder season in the travel industry but for people whose two-week vacations include Memorial Day, that gets counted as part of the holiday numbers,” she said. “Also, it used to be that school went into June, but not that many districts that do that anymore so now school is out and you can go on vacation so that plays a factor too.”
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