WASHINGTON, June 23 (Reuters) – US highway travel jumped 1.2 percent in April from a year earlier, rising 3.1 billion miles to nearly 256 billion miles, the US Transportation Department said on Tuesday.

April's figures marked the second straight month when the number of miles Americans drove increased, following two months of declines caused by winter storms in the eastern half of the United States that kept drivers off the roads.

''It seemed like in April we had very good weather and a later Easter holiday,'' which may account for more travel, said Phil Flynn, senior energy analyst at PFGBest Research in Chicago. ''We had a little bit of cabin fever demand found in that increase.''

The boost occurred even though retail gasoline prices were much higher in April than prices were during the same month last year.
Regular gasoline averaged $2.85 a gallon this April, up 80 cents from April 2009, according to the Energy Department.

The increase in highway travel may have also reflected improvement in the job market that made some Americans comfortable driving more at a higher fuel price, but it is not a sign of a full economic recovery, according to Flynn.

''The increased demand we saw in April didn't seem to have the legs you expect,'' Flynn said. He said May highway travel might decline in response to the weak employment numbers already released by the government for that month, which showed few jobs were created in the private sector.

The total number of miles driven so far this year was down 0.2 percent, or 1.6 billion miles, from the same period of 2009. In April, the Transportation Department estimated US drivers covered almost 256 billion miles.

Motorists drove the most number of miles during April in the U.S central region, from the Dakotas to Ohio, up 2.2 percent at 57 billion miles. That was followed by a 1.7 percent increase to 50.7 billion miles in the South Gulf area that stretches from Texas to Tennessee and Alabama.

Highway travel rose in all but seven states, with Nevada and Oregon posting the greatest declines of 1.7 and 1.2 percent, respectively.