Hitting the road? July 4th travelers face high gas prices, clogged roads – Daily News

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Free at last from the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, scores of Southern Californians are getting ready to leave town for their Independence Day holiday.

Expect traffic on the road and long lines at the airport.

Travelers will pay the highest gas prices recorded in seven years and may also find some stations are out of gas because there aren’t enough fuel-truck drivers to fill the tanks.

Those who take to the skies could face flight delays as a result of weather issues and a shortage of available pilots.

Despite those issues, the Automobile Club of Southern California projects a strong bounce back in travel over the Independence Day weekend.

Big numbers

More than 3.3 million Southern Californians are expected to take trips over the holiday weekend – a 46% increase from last year.

More than 86% are expected to drive to their destinations, while more than 13% will fly, and about 1% will go by other means since cruises from American ports are canceled and fewer people are using trains or buses.

“We expect car travel to be the highest on record and air travel to be the third-highest amount since AAA started tracking data in 2001,” Filomena Andre, the Auto Club’s vice president for travel, said in a statement.

Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for the Oil Price Information Service, said gas stations are experiencing outages across the nation in such states and areas as California, the Pacific Northwest, Colorado and Iowa, as well as Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio.

“It used to be an afterthought for station owners to schedule truck deliveries,” Kloza said. “Now it’s job No. 1.”

The increased fuel demand for July equates to about 2,500 to 3,000 more deliveries needed nationwide every day.

“There just aren’t the drivers to do that,” Kloza said.

A shortage of drivers is a problem throughout the trucking industry and but it takes special qualifications to drive a tank truck, making that shortage worse than in other sectors.

High prices

Meanwhile, gas prices continue to rise.

On Tuesday, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas in Los Angeles County was $4.30, up $1.23 from a year earlier, according to price tracker GasBuddy.com. Prices were similarly high in Orange County and the Inland Empire. (File photo by Cindy Yamanaka, Orange County Register/SCNG)

On Tuesday, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded in Los Angeles County was $4.30, up $1.23 from a year earlier, according to price tracker GasBuddy.com. The last time L.A. County’s average topped that level was in October 2012 when it reached an all-time high of nearly $4.71 a gallon.

Prices are similarly high in other regions of Southern California.

Orange County averaged $4.27 a gallon Tuesday, while San Bernardino County averaged  $4.21 and Riverside County stood at $4.22 a gallon.

Karen Ellis of Castaic isn’t traveling this weekend, although she’s planning an upcoming day trip to Santa Barbara. And with gas prices as high as they are, she alters her driving habits.

“I try to keep my foot off the gas and not accelerate too fast, but that irritates the people behind you,” she said. “I go to Costco, and last week I got gas for $3.59 a gallon. Plus, I get 4% off with my Costco credit card.”

The top five Independence Day destinations for Southern California travelers are Las Vegas, San Diego, Zion/Bryce Canyon national parks, Grand Canyon National Park and Yosemite National Park.

Travelers who are not fully vaccinated are advised not to fly, and those who have been vaccinated will still be required to wear masks and remain as socially distanced from others as possible.

Southwest Airlines had more than 1,300 flights delayed or canceled over the June 26 weekend because of storm activity. Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, also linked some of the problems to staffing shortages. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Air travel

FlightAware, a website that tracks airline delays and cancellations in real time, showed 2,987 delays and 270 cancellations Tuesday tied to U.S. flights in and out of the country. Southwest Airlines had more than 1,300 flights delayed or canceled over the June 26 weekend because of storm activity at its major hubs.

Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, also linked some of the problems to staffing shortages caused by pilots and others taking extended time off to avoid pandemic-related layoffs.

Heath Montgomery, a spokesman for Los Angeles International Airport, said that’s nothing new.

“There has been a pilot shortage for a long time — even before the pandemic,” he said. “It’s a challenge to get a new class of people trained as pilots. It takes time.”

Montgomery said LAX hasn’t experienced any undue delays or cancellations, although travel has picked up significantly.

“There has been a surge in demand for air travel,” he said. “It’s a supply-and-demand issue. A lot more people are really itching to get back into the skies. We’re the busiest we’ve been since February of 2020, but we’re still at about 60% to 65% of our 2019 passenger numbers.”

Still, Montgomery advises travelers to arrive early.

“It’s always best to keep track of your flight status,” he said. “You should sign up for message alerts and get here early because LAX is currently an active construction zone.”

The airport is in the midst of a $14.5 billion modernization program that will add an automated people-mover, rebuild Terminal 3 from the ground up and revamp all of the airport’s other terminals, among other upgrades.

“Parking is also at a maximum much of the time, so people need to have a backup plan,” Montgomery said. “They could have someone drop them off, or maybe take a shuttle.”



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