AAA: 4.8 Million Californians Traveling This July 4th

A new survey of Californians finds Fourth of July holiday travel will be relatively unchanged from last year.

Cynthia Harris is with AAA of Northern California. She says the auto club expects more than 4.8 million Californians to travel 50 miles or more from home over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

“This is a 0.5 percent increase, not even a 1 percent increase from last year," says Harris. "But it doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have a healthy travel season.”

Harris says it probably means we won’t see any decreases in holiday travel.

If you’re staying at a hotel, she says expect higher room rates than last year.

“That happens with any commodity that’s going to be sought after and we know that during theFourth of July weekend a lot of people travel so the rates go up," says Harris. "That happens on Thanksgiving, it happens during Christmas and New Year’s.”

Harris says the average hotel room will cost 6 percent more than last year.

She says gas prices are expected to hold steady over the upcoming weekend.

"In the Sacramento area, gas is $3.22. So it's just down a few cents from a week ago," she says. "So we're not going to see any major spikes in gas prices. And should there be a shutdown of a major refinery it would take several days, a week or so, for that to affect us at the pump anyway."

The AAA survey finds about 3.8 million Californians are expected to drive to reach their holiday destinations. That's up only slightly from last year.

More than 573,000 travelers will take to the skies; an increase of nearly two-percent. Travel numbers for all other modes of transportation, including bus and rail, are relatively unchanged from last year.

More than 4.8 million Californians will be traveling over the holiday weekend, the highest number of travelers since 2010.