PORTLAND (AP) – The Maine Turnpike is less crowded this season, with a 4 percent drop in the number of cars and trucks using the toll road last month, officials said.

For the year, traffic is down 1.3 percent, said Dan Paradee, spokesman for the Maine Turnpike Authority. Typically, traffic has been growing 1.5 percent a year.

“This is somewhat extraordinary,” Paradee said. “This is really the first time in a long time, since perhaps a brief recession in the 1980s, where we saw a decline in traffic growth year over year. People are definitely traveling less.”

Nationally, Americans have driven 2.1 percent fewer miles through April, compared to the same period last month, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

A survey of AAA motorists anticipated the change in driving habits.

The survey found that people would make “considerable changes” in their gas-buying habits when gas prices hit $3.50.

The current average was $4.13 per gallon on Monday in Maine, according to AAA.

Rene Letourneau, a spokeswoman for AAA Northern New England, said this was the first time in more than a decade that fewer people were traveling on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

Traffic at the York toll plaza was down 1.4 percent on the Sunday of the Fourth of July weekend.

“I’ve never seen it before,” Letourneau said. “People are absolutely driving less and staying closer to home, even on the weekends. If they have errands, people are making a point of making just one trip out. Years ago, you wouldn’t have even given it a thought.”

Paradee agreed that overall economic concerns have made drivers conservative.

“Households are under a lot of stress, because of gas prices and food prices and heating prices. It’s all going up. People seem to be reacting to that,” he said.

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