Both same-day and overnight car travel from Canada to the US fell sharply at the end of last year, according to Statistics Canada.
Contributing factors: winter storms and a dip in the value of the Canadian dollar.
The decline halted the growth of significant gains in cross-border automobile travel by Canadians.
“Travel may have been dampened by heavy snowfalls in early and mid-December that resulted in hazardous driving conditions and cancelled flights across Canada,†says Statistics Canada.
Overnight trips to the US by air remained relatively unchanged in December at 506,000. For 2007 as a whole, Canadians took a record-high 5.9 million such trips, up 6.1%from 2006. It was the second annual record in a row. In the opposite direction, Americans took a record-low 804,000 same-day car trips to Canada in December, down 2.4 per cent from November.
Report by David Wilkening
