- Actor Hugh Grant (63) got stuck in heavy traffic on the A3 near Tolworth today
The bank holiday break began when some motorists, including actor Hugh Grant, were stuck in “almost stationary traffic jams” for up to five hours.
It came on Friday, when the start of the long weekend coincided with the start of half term for many schools, with the RAC predicting more than 20 million leisure car journeys will be made between Friday and Monday.
This would be the most for a bank holiday weekend at the end of May since 2019.
Grant, 63, was attempting to drive on the A3 near Tolworth in Greater London on Friday afternoon.
At one point he said he was stuck “for four and a half hours now and it still hasn’t gone through”.
Earlier, writing on X, formerly Twitter, as he sought to clarify the delay, Transport for London (TfL) asked: “Any chance of an update on the situation on the A3 at Tolworth? We are now entering the third hour of an almost motionless traffic jam. And there is still a long red line ahead of us. And no exits. Children in the car.’
TfL responded: “For safety reasons we have had to close two lanes of traffic on the A3 leading to the Tolworth underpass for emergency repairs. Unfortunately, there are still major delays. We are monitoring the situation and note that traffic is moving, albeit slowly. We are sorry for the delay.”
During the jam, motorist Musawir Idrees posted an emoji on X showing his frustration, saying: “Stuck in A3 traffic for the last five hours. Roadwork.”
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Earlier, National Highways urged travellers, including those heading to the Chelsea Flower Show in London, to allow extra time as there were around three miles of traffic jams.
They warned that lanes were closed on the A3 in London northbound between the A244 junction at Esher and the A309 junction at Chessington to help TfL work on the Tolworth underpass.
An attempted theft of signaling cables caused disruption to the main line on Friday as National Rail Inquiries said trains must run at reduced speeds between Birmingham New Street and Wolverhampton until the damaged cables are repaired.
Meanwhile, the switch outage also prevented trains from stopping at stations between these locations.
The problems affected passengers traveling with Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, London Northwestern Railway, Transport for Wales and West Midlands Railway.
Many train services are also due to be affected this weekend as Network Rail carries out engineering projects.
Services on the West Coast Main Line will be reduced due to work around Crewe and Carlisle.
Trains are also set to be affected by track renewal between Carstairs and Lanark in Scotland, while there will be significant changes to services on the Great Eastern Main Line due to work to build a new station at Beaulieu Park east of Chelmsford.
Network Rail says it often carries out major engineering works around bank holidays to reduce the number of passengers affected.
Aviation analytics company Cirium said Friday appeared to be the busiest day of the year for UK airports since October 2019, with more than 3,150 departures.
A total of 8,486 flights are scheduled to depart from Saturday to Monday, which equates to more than 1.5 million seats.
The most popular international destinations for departures to the UK are Dublin, Amsterdam, Palma, Alicante and Malaga.