The two month French school holidays officially start on Friday, July 3rd, as the school year ends – although some pupils have already finished for the year. Roads and railways are expected to be busy across the country, as people start taking their holidays as soon as the schools break up. Friday and Saturday are expected to be the busiest days for travel towards popular holiday destinations. Traffic will be heavy on Friday on roads leading to the north-east, the Atlantic coast, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region
and Mediterranean coast. In Île-de-France, traffic will be very heavy heading towards the toll booths on the A10 and A6 motorways from late morning onwards. By mid-afternoon, the increase in traffic, combined with commuter traffic, could lead to persistent problems until late in the evening. Furthermore, the A13 motorway is expected to experience delays from mid-afternoon onwards. It’s a similar story on Saturday. Traffic on the routes along the Atlantic coast, those serving the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and the Mediterranean coast will be heavy from early
morning until late afternoon. In Île-de-France, traffic delays are expected to begin relatively early in the morning, particularly on the A10 and A6. The A13 motorway is also expected to be very busy from mid-morning onwards. On Sunday, meanwhile, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region is expected to see the heaviest congestion from mid-afternoon until early evening in the direction of popular holiday areas. For those returning home, in the Île-de-France region, relatively heavy traffic is expected between mid-afternoon and late evening on the A10 and A6. The
A13 motorway is also expected to be congested from mid-afternoon until late evening. SNCF boss Jean Castex warned on Wednesday that the train operator is “preparing to cope”, with the influx of travelers starting Friday for the summer holidays, without being able to “guarantee that everything will run perfectly” as hot temperatures return to parts of France. “We have had to pre-emptively cancel some trains this week to prepare them, to check that everything is working properly and that they are fully operational from Friday,”
Castex told France Inter radio. While teams have been working flat out to ensure as full a service as possible on the first weekend of the summer holidays, when SNCF expects a passenger surge, he added, “I cannot guarantee that everything will run 100 per cent smoothly.” France is set to bake under another heatwave starting at the end of the week, shortly after a record-breaking canicule sizzled the country at the end of June, according to Météo-France forecasts. The previous one, which lasted two
weeks, severely impacted transport infrastructure, particularly the railways. According to an SNCF report on Thursday, nearly 10 percent of trains were cancelled due to the heatwave. Of 2.7million passengers who boarded trains in France over the period, some 33,000 were delayed by more than three hours. Airports in France are operating normally, with no delays caused by strikes or walkouts planned over the first weekend of the summer holidays. However, concern over airport delays caused by the Entry/Exit System (EES) has risen sharply as the
summer holiday period approaches. Organisations representing European airports and airlines have called on the European Commission to adopt urgent measures to limit delays at border checks, which are causing disruption for travellers and also “undermining Europe’s reputation, European tourism and connectivity,” they wrote in an open letter to Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. READ ALSO ‘Critical point’: Europe’s airports demand urgent action to avoid summer border delays Since the introduction of the EES, numerous airports have reported significant delays at border crossings, with the
situation worsening at holiday times. The groups argued that since the full rollout of the EES in April, “waiting times at border control have increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours during peak traffic periods”. These delays are “impacting millions of passengers entering the Schengen Area, including families travelling with young children, elderly passengers and persons with reduced mobility.” The historic and deadly heatwave that gripped France at the end of June have slowly receded over the past week. But forecasters have warned that
temperatures will begin to rise again in the south of the country from Thursday, reaching 33C to 35C around the Mediterranean coast. Over the weekend, temperatures exceeding 30C will spread across much of the country, with the exception of the departments along the English Channel. In the south, temperatures are expected to reach over 35C in Languedoc-Roussillon and from the Toulouse region to the northern Aquitaine Basin, with weather patterns suggesting that temperatures will be significantly above normal for the entire country well into next
week. READ ALSO: How bad will France’s July heatwave be?
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