Snarled traffic around the Bay Bridge may have cut slightly into Labor Day travel and Ocean City visitation, tourism officials said Wednesday.
Ocean City saw 261,113 visitors over the Labor Day weekend, spokeswoman Donna Abbott said. The resort tracks wastewater use to determine an approximate number of tourists.
Abbott said the number beat expectations of 250,000 visitors, but was down slightly from 277,581 last year. She said concerns of hours-long backups on the Bay Bridge were offset by forecasts for sunny weather.
“People made a decision to travel off-peak or make the drive around,” Abbott said. “It probably affected the last-minute traveler who wasn’t sure if they wanted to go. If people had reservations, they were going to go.”
Abbott said the exact economic effect of the decrease from last year won’t be clear until tax receipts are turned in about a month from now.
AAA’s Mid-Atlantic branch expected 648,000 Marylanders to travel 50 miles or more over the weekend, a 0.6 percent decline from 2007. The decrease included a 0.8 percent drop in car travel and a 3.7 percent decline in air travel.
Like the Memorial Day and Fourth of July holidays before it, the organization attributed the projected decline to higher gas prices, spokeswoman Christine Delise said.
Maryland Transportation Authority spokeswoman Terri Moss said final figures for Bay Bridge travel were not yet available, due in part to the waiving of tolls on the bridge Friday afternoon.
Moss said backups stretched eight miles from the bridge on Thursday and between three and four miles on Friday, but said the bridge saw “minimal delays Saturday through Monday.”
The left lane of the eastbound span was closed for repairs Wednesday morning after an inspection found corrosion in reinforcing steel bolts in the bridge’s concrete barrier. Moss said a “worst-case scenario” would close the bridge for eight weeks, but said repairs could be completed much sooner.
