Why Sheffield should be braced for major travel disruption over Easter weekend

Maundy Thursday is likely to see the highest number of vehicles on the road over Easter as commuters and families head home for the long weekend.

The RAC said drivers will complete nearly 19 million separate leisure journeys by car over Easter - the first big getaway weekend of the year.

A study of drivers' plans conducted by the RAC indicates that the largest number of trips will take place on Good Friday with 4.45 million individual journeys being taken, closely followed by Maundy Thursday and Saturday which are each expected to see 3.18 million individual trips.

It is Thursday that is likely to see the largest overall number of vehicles on the road, as cars carrying families and friends vie for space with commuter traffic.

Planned upgrades to some parts of the national rail network will likely see an increase in road traffic through the weekend, with buses carrying rail passengers in some parts of the north west, south west and east of England.

Rail strikes are also set to cause problems on the train with users warned to plan ahead with Northern workers set to stage a 24-hour strike in a row over driver-only operated trains.

The RMT walk-out is set to start today and is expected to affect early morning and late evening services.

Sheffield commuters will be affected by the strike if they're travelling to and from Manchester Piccadilly, York, Newcastle, Carlisle, Preston and Chester.

Sharon Keith, regional director at Northern, said: “We know how important rail services are for those travelling around the Easter bank holidays and we will be operating as many of our services as we can to help get our customers where they need to be.

“We have planned to provide around 70 per cent of our usual services between the hours of 7am and 7pm.

“It is vitally important that our customers plan carefully for their Easter getaways on Thursday as we will have few services in the early morning and late evening. Our advice is to plan ahead, allow extra time for travel and check for service updates on our website.”

Highways England said it is helping people travelling to seaside locations, ports and airports by removing some 300 miles of roadworks.

The organisation said this means around 99% of motorways and major A-roads will be roadworks-free in time for Easter.

Highways England's customer service director, Melanie Clarke, said: "Safety is our top imperative and we know from experience that almost half of breakdowns are avoidable and these can easily be avoided with simple vehicle checks.

"Easter is always a busy period on the road network and we'd urge all motorists to make sure they do their bit to check their vehicle is roadworthy before setting off over this period."