PORTLAND — There’ll be a lot of traffic on the Maine Turnpike for the three-day Columbus Day holiday weekend.

Columbus Day weekend is usually the second-busiest weekend of the year for the turnpike, behind Labor Day weekend.

Maine Turnpike Authority spokesman Dan Morin says most people are surprised when they learn that.

The highway had more than 950,000 toll transactions during the Friday-through-Monday weekend in 2010 and 2011, and about 922,000 last year, when the weather wasn’t so good.

By comparison, there were 971,000 toll transactions on Labor Day weekend this year.