Holidaymakers who have taken the road must be patient: traffic is saturated this Saturday for the second weekend of the school holidays with more than 1,000 km of traffic jams on the highways at midday,
according to Bison Futé.
The peak of slowdowns reached 1,053 km nationally at 12:05, according to the website of the road information organization, before a traditional expected decline, linked to the lunch break on the motorway areas. Last weekend, the milestone of 1,100 kilometers of slowdown was crossed at the same time.
The descent of the very busy Rhône valley
Bison Futé had announced dense and very difficult traffic with a Saturday classified red throughout the territory in the direction of departures and orange in the direction of returns. Unsurprisingly, traffic is very busy in the descent of the Rhône valley with 136 kilometers of great difficulty in the direction Lyon-Marseille. On the A7 – “Autoroute du Soleil” -, the authorities recommend avoiding the sector linking Avignon to Marseille and to prefer exit 14 at Valence Nord, then to follow the National 7 towards Gap then Chabeuil in order to to join an alternative route.
On the Mediterranean arc, motorists drive accordion-style. It takes 2h30 to connect Orange to Narbonne, compared to 1h40 usually. In the west of the country, the interdepartmental road directorate has observed difficulties in the province-Paris direction, which are set to increase around the agglomerations of Nantes, Vannes and Lorient.
In addition to France’s juillettistes, this weekend are holidaymakers from Northern Europe, more and more likely to travel to France, according to Bison Futé, during the school holidays in their own country. Sunday, in the direction of departures, the day is classified orange in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur and green in the rest of the country.