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The first really black Saturday is over. On the main routes to the southern European holiday countries, cars drove bumper to bumper. By 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning, there were already hundreds of kilometers of traffic jams on the roads. On the Route du Soleil, travelers had to take into account an extra travel time that had already increased to 5 hours and 17 minutes this morning.
,,That didn’t bode well, because last year the delay increased to 4.5 hours at the peak. And that was around noon”, says Arnoud Broekhuis of the ANWB Traffic Information, who believes that it really is a pitch-black Saturday. “In Germany, Austria and Belgium, holidaymakers who were on the road by car also had to deal with lengthy traffic jams.”
Add hours to the journey
,,It was really busy on Saturday and in fact you can only rightly speak of a black Saturday. Compared to the three previous weekends, you sometimes had to add hours before you arrived at your holiday address at the campsite, hotel or apartment,” says Broekhuis. ,,That is because this weekend people in Spain, Italy and France will also be taking a holiday and will be on their way to their holiday address. In previous weekends, it was mainly certain regions from our country and Germany that were traveling, which also caused a lot of crowds, but compared to today nothing much.”
The Traffic Information at the ANWB in The Hague closely monitors where the crowds arise. “It is extremely busy everywhere and you see problems arising on more and more roads”, Heleen de Geest also sees on Saturday afternoon. “We monitor everything and pass on information to travelers via Twitter and our site. In addition, the high temperatures cause additional nuisance, because with 35 degrees Celsius it is not pleasant to travel.”
sorry
Where it stopped on almost all routes towards the sun in France on Saturday, it also came to a standstill on the A8 at the border between Germany and Austria with an extra travel time of four hours. “Wherever we looked, the roads were full everywhere”, says Broekhuis. “I think a lot of holidaymakers on Saturday regret that they took to the road despite all the warnings.”
A thousand road works
In Germany, traffic was also affected by the nearly a thousand road works taking place on the Autobahn. Not only did people suffer from this in the south, returning Scandinavian holidaymakers also got stuck there. “Ah, wherever we look, congestion occurs everywhere”, Edwin de Hart of the traffic information service also said. ,,You can hardly keep up, because it really changes every minute now. People who go on the road just have to keep an eye on the info on the sites, but avoiding traffic jams will be almost impossible this weekend.”
Lucky in an accident is for the ANWB Traffic Information that the farmers did not cause any problems on Saturday. ,,We could therefore mainly focus on foreign countries with our news provision. In our country, it was also very easy with the crowds. Rijkswaterstaat will be working on the A2, the Eindhoven ring road in the coming period. Until August 22, traffic in both directions will have to travel on fewer and narrower lanes. This will lead to significant disruption. This route is not recommended for cars with a caravan.