Heavy winter holiday traffic predicted this weekend
Watch out if you are planning to travel by road this weekend: traffic prediction service Bison Futé has announced a national orange alert, and a severe black alert in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
Alerts are also in place for Ile-de-France for this evening (Friday February 16).
This is largely due to overlapping school holiday periods, with zone C (schools in Créteil, Montpellier, Paris, Toulouse and Versailles) overlapping with zone A (Besançon, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Dijon, Grenoble, Limoges, Lyon and Poitiers) - a configuration that is expected to cause especial difficulty in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
Motorways predicted to be most affected today include the A6 near the Fleury péage from 11h-23h, and the A10 near the Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines péage from 18h-19h. Bison Futé advice suggests that any drivers leaving Bordeaux, Paris, Lyon or Grenoble should do so before 16h or after 20h.
On Saturday, the advice is to avoid Paris and Lyon on the A6 between 8h-11h, and to anticipate difficulties in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, especially on the A42 towards Lyon from 10h-16h; on the A40 between Mâcon and Geneva from 9h to 16h; on the A43 between Lyon and Chambéry from 7h to 16h; the N90 between Albertville and Bourg-Saint-Maurice; and finally on the A48 and the A480, towards Grenoble between 10h and 13h.
More happily, the roads will be freer in the return direction on Saturday, with the alert level at the lowest level of green everywhere, except in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, which will be on orange.
Similarly, the weather is expected to be fine, with only a few intermittent showers expected between the Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, and sunny intervals around Normandie and the Grand Est.
