Top start to the summer holidays! While the heat returns to the entire territory, many French people begin their long-awaited summer vacations. Whether it is on the highways, at the stations or at the airports, there will be people everywhere.
on the streets
Bison Futé warned that traffic would be heavy on major French highways on Friday and even heavier on Saturday in Grand-Ouest, Nord and on the busy A7 in the Rhone Valley.
In Île-de-France on Friday afternoon, the combination of work trips home, weekends and holidays could make traffic difficult until late at night.
on the trains
SNCF expects this weekend 1.4 million customers on long-distance trains, with 2,300 trains in circulation.
In the Austerlitz pavilions under construction, from where Intercités leave for Toulouse, Châteaudun or Brive, and above all various night trains, the morning was quite calm. But on weekends, “the station is full, it’s a bit crazy,” Balla Diarra, 61, responsible for cleaning the corridors, testified in front of the station.
“We have an extraordinary rail network, excluding strikes,” Cédric Doche, 33, enthused on the esplanade. On vacation from his investment fund, he was about to join Nantes (3H45 in OuiGo Classic) and then continue by bike to La Baule (Loire-Atlantique).
SNCF specifies that 45% of tickets are still available for this summer on long-distance trips on TGV and Intercités.
In addition, the Delegate Minister for Transport, Clément Beaune, inaugurated the holidays on Friday morning at the Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris, announcing the sale this summer of 200,000 tickets at 19 euros for trips on Intercités, that is, the main lines slower than the TGV.
These tickets are on sale until July 15, for trips until August 31, on lines such as Paris-Toulouse, Bordeaux-Marseille, Nantes-Lyon or even Paris-Briançon by night train.
at airports
The Parisian airports of Roissy and Orly expect 330,000 to 340,000 passengers per day during this weekend of large departures. This is more than in 2019, before the Covid pandemic, Augustin de Romanet, chief executive of Aéroports de Paris, said on RTL.
After an early summer of 2022 marked by a strike at Paris airports, which had contributed to the loss of tens of thousands of suitcases in Roissy, Augustin de Romanet vowed that this scenario would never happen again.
“We have put a lot of effort into organizing the queues, in the human support of the queues, we have put a lot of people to prioritize the elderly, families, the disabled.”
Source: BFM TV
