A numbers story
Gas prices hurt holiday travel overall, but numbers at local welcome center are steady
By Larry Meyer
Argus Observer
Sunday, August 31, 2008 12:36 AM PDT
ONTARIO—The numbers tell the story.
Higher gas prices slowed summer and holiday travel during the past six months, but with falling fuel prices travel for the Labor Day weekend appears to have picked up.
At least the number of people stopping at the Ontario Welcome Center — the rest area where traffic comes off the Snake River Bridge — is up.
Some of the gas prices in the Ontario and Nyssa area remain from $3.87 per gallon to $3.89 a gallon.
One of those people stopping at the Welcome Center was R.A “Doc” Wright, Mariposa, Calif., a retired commander of the California Highway Patrol, who said he is headed home on his motorcycle, after a trip across the United States, with about 1,000 miles to go.
“It gets 38 to 40 miles per gallon,” Wright said of his motorcycle, and it cost him as much as $20 to $25 dollars to fill up.
He also has not noticed much decline in speed, he said. Welcome Center manager Karen Cleaver said business was slow in July.
“Last month we were down 14 percent (from a year ago),” Cleaver said.
However, many of the people that did stop and seek information at the center appeared to be staying longer and camping, instead of going to a motel or hotel every night.
“A lot of people were tent camping,” Cleaver said.
People with motorhomes were picking central locations to park their vehicles and then taking shorter day trips, she added.
Traffic increased at the welcome center about a month ago, staff member Barry Sucorowski said.
“The third week of July it started to pick up,” Sucorowski said. Cleaver agreed the numbers at the center are beginning to climb.
“We are already ahead of the Fourth of July,” Cleaver said. “We’re getting a lot of people from the Southeast.”
A large share of people from states such as Louisiana and Alabama have journeyed through the area along with many people from foreign nations, Cleaver said.
Many of the foreign tourists like to fly into Seattle or San Francisco and then make loop tours to see such sites as the Redwoods and Crater Lake.
“We’ve had several small groups we usually don’t get,” Cleaver said.
In his annual Labor Day forecasts, Dave Carlson, Idaho Automobile Association of America spokesman, said the holiday weekend will see fewer people driving and flying this year, as result of high fuel costs and a weak economy. He projected a decline of 0.9 percent in the people driving 50 miles or more, which is not as big a drop as the Fourth of July which saw a drop of 1.3 percent. However, AAA was projecting an 11 percent increase in the number of people planning to travel by train or bus.
While the AAA does not track travel through the summer, based on its holiday surveys, overall travel during the main vacation months — June, July and August — was down overall, Carlson said.
AAA expects a 4.5 percent decrease in the number of air travelers this holiday season compared to a year ago. Higher airfares and the hassles of flying are cited as factors affecting travelers’ intentions to fly.
