Drivers throughout France should expect difficult road conditions from Friday (July 26) to Sunday (July 28) due to the combination of holiday traffic and the start of the Paris Olympic Games.
France’s official road monitoring service, Bison Futé, is warning of a ‘black traffic day’ on Saturday throughout the country.
Around 300,000 attendees are expected in Paris for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on Friday, which will begin at 20:24. The ceremony will take place on the river Seine and at the Trocadero opposite the Eiffel Tower.
This coincides with what is known in France as a weekend of ‘crossover traffic‘ (chassé-croisé), in which hundreds of thousands of families who took their holiday in July (known in French as juilletistes) crossover with those who holiday in August (known as aoûtiens).
Bison Futéhas advised people to travel on Sunday July 28, if possible. Here are its predictions for the weekend.
Friday, July 26: southbound drivers should expect to see congestion all over France, and particularly heavy traffic around the greater Paris area. Traffic conditions will also be difficult in the northbound direction, travelling from the Mediterranean coast in particular.
Saturday, July 27: drivers should expect some of the most difficult road conditions of the year. In particular, it warns that “traffic will be very difficult from dawn until the evening on the major north-south motorways (A7, A10, A75)”.
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Heavy congestion should also be expected headed to the Atlantic coast (A63 between 11:00 and 19:00), to the Mediterranean coast on the A8 (Le Luc-Italy between 17:00 and 20:00), on the A9 (Orange-Montpellier from 9:00 to 13:00 and Montpellier-Narbonne from 10:00 to 15:00), and the A61 (Toulouse-Narbonne between 11:00 and 16:00).
Sunday, July 28: conditions will have improved nationally, except in the greater Paris area and the Rhone valley.
