Despite recent encouragement from the Ecology minister, the Ecotaxe truck toll will not make a comeback in the regions says the French government.

Also, warning over too high tolls charges in France due to vehicles being put in the wrong category. Another major fire shuts Norway’s Gudvanga Tunnel. Autobahn speed limits in Bavaria to be reduced in response to migrant crisis. The next Operation Stack will see Dover-bound trucks stacked at Manston Airport while Eurotunnel freight will stay on the M20.

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NO ECOTAXE COMEBACK IN THE REGIONS

Government quickly nixes talk of truck toll in Nord Pas de Calais.

The Ecotaxe truck toll will not make a comeback in the regions the French government has said.

Frederic Cuvillier – former minister of transport, now mayor of Boulogne-sur-Mer – set off a flurry of speculation on Monday after proposing a revival of the truck toll in Nord Pas de Calais in northern France.

He told business daily Les Echos the region sees up to fifteen percent of all freight traffic in France thanks to the Channel ports and that, ‘International road transit must fund our ports, our roads and our regional rail.’

The system would be a natural extension of the Belgian truck toll system due to start on 1 April 2016 he added.

However, a spokesman for the Prime Minister’s office told Reuters last night, ‘The government has no plans at all to open this possibility.’

Cuvillier’s comments come after Ecology minister Segolene Royal said in June that regions running their own truck tolls would be a ‘good idea’, especially in places like Alsace which sees a lot of freight traffic diverting from German toll roads.

The national truck toll system was cancelled last year after widespread opposition, principally by ‘bonnet rouge’ (red cap) protestors in Brittany.

It was thought regional tolls could reuse the Ecotaxe gantries erected at vast cost for the now defunct scheme.

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Dutch van driver Andries Bik warns about what he calls ‘the French toll road scam’ where tolls are too high because vehicles are put in the wrong category. It’s unlikely to be a problem for regular car drivers, but those with roof racks, roof boxes or carrying bikes on the back – or van or motorhomes – should be alert to being ‘miscategorised’. Sanef Tolling said last year drivers should double check their auto toll tag invoices to make sure they were charged correctly. See what the toll charges should be at autoroutes.fr. If in doubt at the peage, press the red service button and – as Bik advises – say, ‘Le prix n’est pas bien!’ (the toll is not correct).

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roundup: NORWAY. For the second time in two years a major fire has shut the Gudvanga Tunnel, on the E16 between Oslo and Bergen. On this occasion a coach from Sweden caught fire around 400m from the eastern entrance. Another driver on the scene managed to rescue the passengers but four people are said to be seriously injured. A report into the August 2013 fire – which shut the tunnel for six weeks – was critical of safety arrangements. Vegvesen.no has published a map of alternative routes (also see here). At 11km, Gudvanga is Norway’s second longest tunnel. GERMANY. Police in Bavaria plan to temporarily reduce speed limits on the autobahns due to the number of migrants walking alongside reports Autocar’s German correspondent Greg Kable. Traffikers often dump migrants beside the road as soon as they cross the border. Last night for instance, 38 migrants were picked up in total, 22 Syrians from the A94 and 16 from Syria and Iraq off the A8. The German police union chief meanwhile is calling for border controls to be reinstated according to the Daily Mail. OPERATION STACK. The new arrangements for Operation Stack have been published (see here via Virginia Logistics). It seems freight bound for Dover will be stacked at Manson – and diverted onto M2/A2 from the Dartford crossing (or from J7 of M20) – while M20 will continue to be used for Eurotunnel. Even Dover-bound livestock and perishable/hazardous loads should divert to Manston to be fast-tracked.

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As holiday queues go on throughout the night, a look at some alternatives to Switzerland’s famous Gotthard Tunnel .

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France wasn’t the only place suffering heavy traffic on Saturday.

The combined northbound queue for the Gotthard Tunnel in Switzerland was still 14km long at 18:30, a delay of more than two and a half hours.

The queues finally dispersed at 04:00 the next morning. By 11:00 they were back to 7km, or a wait of ninety minutes.

With another four ‘black’ weekends to come before traffic finally eases off after the summer holidays, drivers can be forgiven for desperately examining the alternatives.

The official advice is that, with delays of more than an hour at Gotthard, drivers should divert onto the A13/A3 via Chur and Zurich. This adds an extra 82km, or around one hour, to the journey between Bellinzona and Basel, for instance.

That might not be too bad but – for long stretches – the A13 is single lane, including the San Bernardino Tunnel.

Queues at San Barnardino are not normally quite as bad as Gotthard but, with the extra mileage, any advantage is slight hence probably why many drivers don’t seem to bother.

Of course, the best alternative to the Gotthard Tunnel is the Gotthard Pass, if you can get to it.

On Saturday, drivers would have to exit the A2 at J44 Biasca and complete the remaining 36km on the H2 road.

The Gotthard Pass in hardly congestion free either though the road works on the northern stretch are lifted at weekends during the summer.

More interesting, we think, is the Lukmanier Pass from Biasca. This road heads north to hit the east-west H19 road at Disentis. Head west to Andermatt, at the top of the north stretch of the Gotthard Pass, via Oberalppass (see this route in more detail here).

The only other thing to do is give Gotthard a totally wide berth during the summer (the queues are not confined to the weekends; at the time of writing mid-afternoon Monday there is a 6km queue northbound. See the annual ‘Staukalender’ jam calendar).

German motoring club ADAC recommends the ‘good, but not very cheap’ Lotschberg Car Train between Goppenstein and Kandersteg in south west Switzerland, on the route between Milan and Bern. The fifteen minute journey costs €25 each way.

Of the other major Alps crossings, the Mont Blanc Tunnel can be just as bad as Gotthard though the Great St Bernard Tunnel, on E27 Aosta-Martigny, is a good dodge.

If it suits your route, the A32/A43 Turin-Lyon Frejus Tunnel is a better bet. It costs the same €43.50 each way as Mont Blanc but is much less congested. 

Delays at Gotthard are signed at regular intervals along the A2, otherwise check the red icons on the TCS traffic page.

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No end in sight: the Swiss will hold a national referendum, probably in October, to decide on whether to build a second tube for the Gotthard Tunnel. A recent poll in Blick says more than seventy percent of voters are in favour but, even if it is built, it won’t mean an end to the queues. After the first tube is refurbished, by 2026, at best the second will carry one lane of traffic (it might even be filled in). Meanwhile, the only hope of – some – relief is if freight traffic is transferred to the new Gotthard railway tunnel due next year. Photo, the north stretch of the Gotthard Pass, 1969 via Swiss.info

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Sweden admits problems with Congestion Charge recovery system as 1500 foreign drivers unfairly fined, and parking fees go unpaid.

Also, Aston Martin heads to night time Berlin. Couple in big trouble after leaving daughter at French service station. Did you know there was a minimum speed limit on Belgian motorways? Coach passengers and truck drivers are being held up the most by a new ‘intelligent frontier’ with Spain.

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UNFAIR FINES FOR SWEDEN CLOG ZONES

Scanners no good at reading registration plates as most foreign parking fines go unpaid.

Stockholm Congestion Zone, photo via TransportStyrelsen.se

The Swedish Transport Administration is having problems with its system for processing congestion zone fines.

More than 14,000 complaints have been made this year, 1500 of them from foreign drivers, over unwarranted charges for the zones in Gothenburg and Stockholm.

‘The system is not one hundred percent certain,’ a spokesman for transport administration Trafikverket admitted to Finland Times.

The system can apparently mix up similar registration numbers, or misread dirty plates.

Foreign drivers were exempt from the congestion charges until the beginning of this year.

At the same time, less than ten percent of foreign drivers pay parking fines reports Radio Sweden.

Of the 82,000 fines issued to visitors from abroad last year, only 8% were paid.

Neither parking nor congestion zone fines are not included in the cross-border prosecution directive.

Such fines have been recoverable from foreign drivers for some years, depending on whether local authorities have agreements with national collection agencies.

Several Swedish parking firms do have contracts in place with London-based Euro Parking Collections, for instance.

However, another Trafiksverket spokesman said, ‘We don’t have any foreign addresses in our database.’

For more information of Stockholm and Gothenburg congestion zones, in English, see Epass24.com.

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Night time Berlin travelogue from Aston Martin.

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roundup: FRANCE. A couple were left red faced – and possibly facing serious sanctions – after leaving their 3-year old daughter at a service stations on Sunday reports AFP. The family were heading to the Cote d’Azur when they stopped at a service station just south of Valence on the A7. They were another 150km into the journey, on the A8 near Aix-en-Provence, when they realised the child had been left behind, and only then because they heard an appeal on the radio. BELGIUM is one of the few European countries which has a minimum speed limit on the motorway (Germany does not, contrary to popular misconception). Last year 122 drivers were fined for driving at less than the legal minimum of 70kmh says automobile association VAB – presumably it doesn’t apply during traffic jams. GIBRALTAR. Except from occasional delays, it seems car drivers have not had too bad a time since the recent introduction of new electronic passport readers, part of the new ‘intelligent frontier’ installed at the border. However, pedestrians (including coach passengers) and truck drivers have suffered. A thousand day trippers have to wait for up to two hours in the sun each day according to GBC News as their identities are verified. Meanwhile, the coaches themselves have to use the notoriously slow-moving, separate commercial entrance. The Gibraltar government has sent a 70 page report to the European Commission detailing the delays over the past month.

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By avoiding last weekend’s Black Saturday, drivers in France have landed themselves in even heavier traffic.

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UNEXPECTEDLY JAMMED IN FRANCE

Last year’s all-time record traffic queues surprisingly rivalled on what was supposed to be a lull day, as A20 to Toulouse quiet again.

After last weekend’s ‘disappointing’ official Black Saturday, traffic today has far exceeded predictions, and come within a whisker of beating last year’s all-time record.

Today (Saturday 8 August) is now officially the second ever busiest Saturday in France.

Combined jams around the country totalled 972km at 13:00.

That is well ahead of last week’s 880km and within 25km of last year’s 994km record.

Peak delays also came uncharacteristically late, 90 minutes later than last Saturday.

According to national traffic centre Bison Fute, today was supposed to be merely ‘red’ (very busy) for departures around the country and merely busy for returns from the Mediterranean.

As well as sheer weight of traffic, queues have been exacerbated by heavy rain across the south and storms down the east of France.

Like last week, delays on the A7 southbound to Avignon and A10 to Bordeaux, while considerable, were much lower than in previous years.

Drivers definitely seem to be taking to the – mostly toll-free – A71/A75 via Clermont Ferrand to Beziers which again saw delays equal to the A7 and A10.

Meanwhile, apart from some congestion around Brive la Gaillarde, the A20 to Toulouse was almost free flowing again.

A particularly busy stretch has been the A9, in both directions around the Spanish border.

However, none of the delays on the major routes south were wildly inflated compared to other August Saturday getaways.

Queues on lesser roads in the northwest have probably accounted for the difference.

As well as habitual peage jams on the A29 into Amiens, the A29 Pont de Normandie bridge near Le Havre, and the A11 southbound to Angers, national roads in Brittany and the roads around Rennes, Nantes and St Malo have all seen considerable queues.

The accumulated evidence all points to drivers avoiding the well-publicised official Black Saturday on the first weekend of August by taking holidays earlier in July and later in August.

They may have also dodged the South of France in favour of the northwest though, clearly, they haven’t given up on their cars.

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Awesome subscriber cover on this month’s EVO magazine, out this weekend. Features editor Henry Catchpole went to Norway in an AMG GT S. Photographer @evoDeanSmith

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With exquisite timing – or not – two new fast ferry services are announced to bypass Dover-Calais, as it emerges the Calais migrant crisis and MyFerryLink strike are actually boosting business for existing operators.

Also, a film of Classic Marathon – up through ‘largely tourist free’ southern Italy – hits TV screens tonight. Masses of Germans fall foul of the new rules on Austria’s motorway vignette. Despite the first quiet week in a while, ministers are still seriously considering shutting the Chunnel at night. The Spanish government makes a formal complaint over the French farmer blocks.

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NO RAMSGATE-BOULOGNE FERRY, YET

Tough times for start-up ferry firms but bumper business for established operators despite migrant crisis and strike.

The Nova Star, secured by Euroferries to serve Ramsgate-Boulogne. Photo Euroferries.

Thanet District Council has issued a strongly worded statement denying there are plans to start a ferry service from Ramsgate to Boulogne.

It comes in response to an announcement last week from Euroferries saying it would start the service on 1 November.

Euroferries also said it had secured the use of the Nova Star ferry from Nova Star Cruises in Canada, an arrangement confirmed by local press.

However, a statement from Thanet calls the press release from Euroferries ‘both inaccurate and misleading’ and denied there was any agreement in place.

It also details unsuccessful dealings with a Euroferries predecessor company stretching back to 2009. 

Earlier this week, a spokeswoman for Euroferries had told @DriveEurope, ‘At this time, we have submitted a timetable to Ramsgate Port, which is already approved by Boulogne, and we are waiting their confirmations.’

Since then, one of the Euroferries’ directors told the Thanet Gazette that due to ‘uncertainties’ it had decided to transfer the port base to Boulogne.

‘Consequently,’ he said, ‘our outstanding request to Thanet District Council is for confirmation from Ramsgate Port of our berthing rights. This we await.’

The council is reportedly also in discussions with another ‘credible’ ferry operator following talks at industry show Multimodal in Birmingham in May.

Also last week, HighSpeedFerries said it was still on course to launch a service from Weymouth to Cherbourg.

The service surfaced in February with an expected start date this autumn. That has now been put back until April 2016.

It claims to save ‘huge’ time for drivers between western England and western France compared to Dover-Calais.

‘We continue to work hard and will make an announcement when the time is right,’ the firm told the Dorset Echo in an article which also included positive comments from Weymouth Borough Council.

Meanwhile, it seems established operators are benefiting from the on-going troubles in Calais.

Condor Ferries said this week that bookings for July had increased by 6.2% compared to the same month last year.

The company put the rise down to both the strength of sterling, and ‘the issues facing passengers travelling on the short sea routes between Dover and Calais.’

The number of passengers using Stena Line’s Harwich to Hook of Holland service are also the highest in five years ‘partly because of migrant crisis in Calais’ reports BBC Essex.

Brittany Ferries has seen twenty percent more passengers in Plymouth due to the Calais migrant crisis says Heart News.

But the short crossing operators are apparently doing well too.

A leaked internal P&O memo seen by the Evening Standard says the Dover-Calais route carried 123,000 freight units in July, ‘the best month in its modern history’.

The 1.04m passengers it carried last month made it the busiest July in the past 11 years.

Meanwhile, Eurotunnel’s record passenger and vehicle numbers have continued, despite regular long delays and service interruptions due to overnight ‘migrant actions’ and striker blockades outside the terminal.

It carried almost a quarter of a million cars, buses and trucks in July. The number of vehicles carried from the UK to France grew by 8% compared to the same month last year, it said.

Haulage industry trade bodies reacted angrily earlier this week to news that P&O and DFDS will both increase rates on the Dover-Calais route, according to a report in Commercial Motor.

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The film of @HERO_CRA ’s Classic Marathon up through southern Italy is on TV tonight at 20:00 (on MotorsTV, SkyUK 447, Virgin Media 545 and Freeview 71). The route started from Lecce, in a region described as ‘largely tourist free’, in the spring. See more on the route and region here, and more amazing photos here. Intriguingly, in a discussion this week about the future of Porsche’s iconic circular Nardo test track, also in southern Italy, on the western side of the heel, Chairman of the Executive Board Francesco Nobile said, ‘Routes outside of the grounds also offer a plethora of excellent driving opportunities.’ Also check out the late Lord McAlpine’s nearby B&B. Lecce is 1340 miles from Calais.

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roundup: AUSTRIA. It might seem a fairly lame way to engage users – who cares what colour the annual motorway vignette is? – but actually almost 100,000 drivers voted in the online poll to pick turkis (tourquoise) for the 2017 toll sticker. It edged out red 50.28:49.72. Next year’s will be mandarin orange announced ASFINAG at the same time. Meanwhile, of the 160,000 drivers fined €120 last year for not buying the vignette, 64,000 were German it emerged earlier this month. The exemptions for short stretches of cross-border motorway were removed at the end of 2013. Even those that did buy it fell foul of the requirement to attach it permanently to the windscreen. CALAIS CRISIS. Despite a week without the M20 freight queue Operation Stack, and three nights without migrant activity – for the first time in many weeks – the ‘nuclear option’ of closing Eurotunnel overnight is still on the table says the Telegraph. Eurotunnel said today it would be obliged to claim compensation to the tune of €200m per year if the tunnel closed overnight. Apparently it has already ‘voluntarily’ reduced the number of overnight services. This all comes after a migrant walked through the tunnel on Tuesday before being arrested at the UK end. FRANCE FARMERS. The Farmer protests have certainly scaled down in the past week apart from a highly disruptive go-slow block on the A48 at Grenoble on Wednesday, plus blocks on the A63 and A64 in the south west. The Spanish government has made a formal complaint today according to AFP, accusing protestors of acting with ‘impunity’ and saying the attacks are ‘multiplying’. On Tuesday, meat was taken from a Spanish truck near Toulouse and distributed at a zoo near Toulouse.

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The SS51 Alemagna State Road in the High Dolomites is a fine drive but, after a spate of major landslides, is probably best avoided during and after heavy rain.

Also, watch out for the bright blue and yellow police ‘Pegasus’ helicopters in Spain. Insurance policies do not generally cover collisions with animals in Iceland, as one tourist finds to his cost. Moves to relax the law on dashcams in Luxembourg as a UK traffic officer goes into the pros and cons of personal video cameras.

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YET ANOTHER DOLOMITES LANDSLIDE

Three die in third landslide around scenic SS51 Alemagna State Road in north east Italy.

Landslide above San Vito di Cadore. Photo Vigili del Fuoco Belluno

The ‘water bomb’ which hit the tiny Dolomites town of San Vito di Cadore late on Tuesday night, killing three, was the third major landslide in the area in the past six weeks.

All three victims, believed to be tourists, including a 14 year old girl, are so far unnamed but are said to be from the Czech Republic.

The three were in a car park on the lower slope of Mount Antelao to the east of the town. A ‘huge mass of earth, mud and rock’ hit, apparently without waning.

‘Violent’ torrential rain had fallen in the region earlier in the day though no warnings were issued by national or European ‘meteoalarm’ services.

‘Not even science could forecast something like this,’ local mayor Roberto Del Bon told ANSA News Agency.

On this occasion SS51 Alemagna State Road was not directly in the firing line though several lesser landslides did make it that far and it was shut for an hour as a precaution.

However, SS51 – the main access road from the south to Cortina d’Ampezzo, and many major mountain passes – was hit both in late June and early July by two other landslides, in similar circumstances.

There were no injuries on the first occasion but during the second a driver was forced to climb a nearby tree to escape.

All three landslides were along the same stretch, between Cortina and San Vito.

The Italian government said today a fund of €1.3bn was available to fix so-called ‘hydrological instability’.

Widespread illegal building, which has eroded natural defences against flash flooding, and the unique geography make the area especially vulnerable.

However, earth works carried out after a catastrophic landslide in July 2009, in which two people died, are said to have saved the town from much worse this time around.

Read more about driving on SS51 Alemagna State Road.

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A Porsche Panamera driver was picked up by the Spanish police ‘Pegasus’ helicopter near Toledo on Tuesday at a top average speed of 218kmh (135mph). Drivers are warned about the presence of airborne speed controls on motorway overhead gantries. Since they were introduced in 2013, the bright blue and yellow helicopters have nicked 8,644 drivers says DGTes. Eight out of the twelve currently in service are equipped with radar.

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roundup: ICELAND. A German long-stay tourist was hit with a €2000 bill after hitting a sheep in western Iceland on Monday reports Iceland Magazine. The sheep was killed and the car badly damaged on the R1 ring road down from Holtavörðuheiði heath into Norðurárdalur valley. The issue was that damage caused by animals was not covered by his rental car insurance policy, and that is not untypical apparently. LUXEMBOURG. The controversial use of dashcams in the Grand Duchy is the subject of a new petition reports Wort.lu. Owning a dashcam is not illegal but using it on the road, and filming pedestrians and other motorists, is a breach of privacy and data protection laws. The Justice Minister clarified in 2014 that there were no exceptions. The petitioner wants the rules relaxed so footage can be used in the event of accidents though he has only managed to gather 95 signatures so far. Austria has similar rules on dashcams (see more on dashcam rules around Europe). Meanwhile, a traffic officer from West Midlands Police published an interesting blog today on the pros and cons of personal video cameras. To sum up: submitting footage opens the owner up to scrutiny of their own driving habits; the self-reporting process is bureaucratic, long-winded and likely to end in a court case; and, those who use dashcams can hardly complain of living in a surveillance society.

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Ferrari driver claims speed record as study announced to keep Romania’s blue chip mountain road open for longer.

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An Italian driver has claimed the Transfagarasan speed record.

Fabio Barone, president of the Ferrari Club Passione Rossa, drove the 12.85km stretch between Balea Lake and Balea waterfall, at the top of the pass, in 9m13.442s yesterday.

The road was closed for four hours during the attempt.

Barone’s stripped out Ferrari 458 Italia had custom designed carbon fibre bodywork and a sports exhaust, and other tweaks, to boost power from the standard 570bhp to 630bhp.

That there was a Transfagarasan speed record is news to us. It’s not clear what the previous record was, who set it, or what they were driving.

Meanwhile, the CNADNR roads authority has finally tendered a €680k study to look at ways of keeping Romania’s blue chip mountain road open for longer each year according to Romania-Insider.com.

Currently, Trasfagarasan is only reliably open between 1 July and 1 November.

First suggested in August 2014, the idea is to keep the northern stretch open all year round, and only close the entire road for three months during the winter.

The study is expected to take one year, and subsequent work at least another three years, though the road should be kept open as normal throughout.

Newly opened sections of the A1 motorway in western Romania, and a new border crossing with Hungary, mean of the 1300 miles between Calais and Transfagarasan, only just under ninety miles is now single lane road.

See more about driving Transfagarasan here.

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A helicopter drops water on a burning car at Carataunas in the Sierra Nevada near Granada, southern Spain, today to prevent the fire spreading to nearby forest. Photo via @Plan_INFOCA

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roundup: OPERATION STACK. Much relief but some misgivings greeted this afternoon’s news that Manston Airport near Ramsgate will be used as a truck park the next time disruption on the Channel leads to freight queues in Kent. Thanet Council leader Chris Wells said, ‘Using Manston as a lorry park is not something we have chosen, requested or welcome’. Port of Dover, ‘Cautions that a heavy goods vehicle holding area at the former Manston Airport site for Port of Dover bound traffic is neither proven to work nor a permanent solution in itself.’ However, haulier Virginia Logistics said, ‘Would make an enormous difference to driver welfare if they can park up and stay parked till they are sent for ferry.’ Folkestone and Hythe MP Damian Collins said, ‘We have to find a solution that takes lorries off-road and Manston does that. This is a massive step towards taking pressure off Kent.’ Kent County Council has published a Q&A on the plans. In brief, perishable, urgent or hazardous goods will be prioritised for Channel crossings while other loads will be kept in a – reduced – Operation Stack on the M20, or sent to Manston. Initially there will be room for 1000 trucks at the former airport. Damian Collins also says there are plans to maintain two-way traffic on the M20. Further announcements are expected today.

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That Gotthard came last in the ADAC Tunnel Test is not quite as bad as it seems since they were all marked ‘good’, or ‘very good’. Meanwhile, Austria highlights some very sexy upcoming safety technology. 

Also, the future of vintage cars in Paris seems assured, at least at the weekends. A Swedish driver earns ten separate speeding fines in Spain on a now notorious road. Drowsiness is the leading cause of death on French motorways, but pedestrians are at high risk too. Good news on the Sofia-Thessaloniki motorway link, but silence on the proposed Kresna mega-tunnel.

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GOTTHARD LAST IN TUNNEL TEST

Standards generally high, even at Switzerland’s two-way mega-tunnel.

The southern approach to the A2 Gotthard Tunnel in Switzerland. Photo @DriveEurope

All the tunnels tested recently by German motoring club ADAC were either ‘good’ or ‘very good’.

ADAC investigated twenty tunnels in all, fourteen in Germany, three in Italy, two in Austria and one in Switzerland.

The best was Berg Bock on the A71 at Suhl between Erfurt and Schweinfurt. Among other things it has well-marked, air tight escape routes, complete video surveillance and even its own fire brigade.

Others that were well-regarded included the A71 Rennsteig Tunnel just up the road at Zella-Mehlis, the A4 Jagdberg at Jena and the A12 Roppener Tunnel near Imst in Austria.

In last place however was the 17km Gotthard Tunnel, on the A2 in south central Switzerland.

Gotthard’s most obvious shortcoming is being single-tube, with two-way, unsegregated traffic. The large proportion of trucks making up its average 17,500 vehicles each day and 2.8km between emergency stations also counted against it.

In response, Swiss touring club TCS notes the results have improved since the last test in 2002, mainly as a result of better traffic monitoring and ventilation.

Meanwhile, Austria roads manager ASFINAG says it is part way through a €1.5bn investment programme with 38 tunnels and tunnel chains due to be renovated by 2019.

As well as continuing to roll out thermal scanners, and fire-fighting high pressure spray systems – which fill the tunnel with cooled water vapour to keep temperatures down – ASFINAG is also pioneering ‘acoustic monitoring’.

Developed by Joanneum Research in Graz, the system filters away background noise to pick out ‘atypical sounds’ in an effort to reduce response time by emergency services.

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Despite long-running fears emission rules would kill it off, Traversee Paris is still a fixture in the French capital. Around 700 cars, fifty motorbikes and almost twenty tractors – none of them less than twenty years old – joined the now traditional parade across the city yesterday, starting from the Chateau de Vincennes, south east of the centre. According to Paris.fr, as of July 2016 all vehicles registered before 1997 will be banned during the day 08-20:00. This also applies at the weekends for buses, coaches and heavy trucks (whose ban started on 1 July 2015), but cars, two-wheelers and light commercial vehicles will be exempt on Saturdays and Sundays. Photo via Morrisette Racing.

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roundup: SPAIN. A Swedish tourist picked up fifteen separate speeding fines over a two week holiday in Malaga says the Olive Press. The total fine amounted to €1500. According to local reports, the two radars on the A-45 in the Las Pedrizas region to the north of the city, near Antequera, within a few kilometres of each other, are both apparently in the top five for fine revenue in the whole country. Many drivers fall foul of both. While remote speeding fines are not a concern for British (and Irish and Danish) drivers using their own vehicles until May 2017, when the new cross-border directive comes into effect, holiday makers who rent locally registered cars do have to pay. FRANCE. The leading cause of fatal accidents on French motorways is drowsiness according to ASFA, the association of autoroute operators. Released on Saturday to coincide with – supposedly – the busiest day of the year on French roads, the report says nearly a third of deaths in the past five years have been down to drivers falling asleep at the wheel. The number of speeding related accidents has fallen by half in the same period, to 16% of the total. Most shocking, 15% of fatalities are pedestrians, on the roadway following accidents or breakdowns. Overall, autoroutes are five times safer than other roads says the report, a factor not included – we noted – in the recent row over high toll fees, and the rising number of road deaths on France. BULGARIA. The southernmost section of the Struma Highway opened on Friday says Novinite.com, a significant step in completing the 150km motorway link between capital Sofia and Thessaloniki, Greece. The new 14.7km stretch links the border at Kulata with Sandanski. The work was co-financed between the EU Cohesion Fund and the national budget though at what proportion is not clear. With the northernmost section of Struma already open, and the next one south to be completed by October, only the (significant) 64km section including the Kresna Gorge remains. However, nothing more has been heard since plans were revealed last year to build a 15.4km tunnel through Kresna in a bid to preserve one of the Balkan’s best known beauty spots and wildlife havens.

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Total traffic jams in France on Black Saturday fall far short of last year’s record amid suggestions the hype surrounding the great holiday getaway is finally starting to work.

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Black Saturday hype. Known as Samedi Noir in France and Zwarte Zaterdag in the Netherlands.

That French police were able to drive the flight MH370 wing tip from Paris to Toulouse yesterday tells you everything you need to know about this year’s Black Saturday.

The fragment touched down at Paris Orly at 06:15 and arrived at its final destination at 17:30 according to AFP, a road trip of 670km down through France, on the busiest day of the year and, supposedly, on one of the busiest routes.

By 05:45 yesterday morning there were combined jams of 270km in France, up from 178km at the same time, on the same day in 2014.

Things looked on course to beat last year’s record of 994km and break through the 1000km barrier for the first time.

By 11:15 however, there were ‘only’ 640km of jams, well behind last year’s 750km at the same time.

Shortly after 12:30 it was all over: a Black Saturday 2015 peak of 880km entered into the history books.

As anti-climactic as it was, that figure represents considerably less misery for drivers off on their holidays this year, and it implies the hype surrounding Black Saturday is paying off.

With previous weekends much busier than expected it appears some drivers have taken holidays earlier than usual.

A lot is made of the Juilletistes – those who take their holidays in July – and Aoutiens who prefer August. This year it seems the balance tipped in favour of the former.

At the same time, the A7 Lyon-Avignon was much less busy than usual. The maximum delay of 2h50 was half last year.

The A10/A63 Paris-Bordeaux-Spain route may have taken a beating overall but, apart from at the peage by the Spanish border, there were no individual big delays.

Meanwhile, the alternatives to these routes – the N85 Route Napoleon and N10 via Angouleme – both saw big jams as drivers routed around known black spots.

The same goes for the A71/A75 Vierzon-Beziers via Clermont Ferrand. It saw delays equalling the A7 and A10, for the first time in our experience.

The big surprise was the A20. On the direct route Paris-Toulouse via Limoges – doubtless the way the MH370 wing went – it was almost completely quiet all day.

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Austria’s Felbertauernstrasse was dragged into the row over the German foreigner toll earlier this year but otherwise, little is heard about this interesting alternative to the Innsbruck-Verona Brenner motorway and A10 Salzburg-Villach Tauernautobahn. A new spruce up might change that.

Meanwhile, a combined ticket gives a – small – discount on Grossglockner. Photos, map and toll charges below.

Update: according to the ADAC, the new road opened on Tuesday 18 August.

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Felbertauernstrasse rises and falls 1000m in central west Austria. All photos Felbertauernstrasse.at

A major landslide in May 2013 knocked out a 100m stretch of road immediately south of the tunnel at the top of B108 Felbertauernstrasse.

In its place came a hastily constructed, tight and twisty road way which slowed progress considerably – for larger vehicles especially – on the way through central west Austria.

Since then the authorities have built a completely new 1.5km road, well away from the high risk area. It opens to the public on Friday 21 August.

Earlier this year, German transport minister Alexander Dobrindt cited the ‘discriminatory’ tolls on Felbertauernstrasse during the increasingly desperate defence of his own, allegedly discriminatory, ‘foreigner toll’, due now in 2017.

While regular drivers pay €10 each way to drive the 36km of B108 between Mittersill and Matrei in Osttirol, those that live in the region pay just €8. The charge for locals is €4.

In truth, the European Commission is already on Felbertauernstrasse’s case (though all has gone a bit quiet since the action was launched last September).

Meanwhile, to sweeten the pill – slightly – a combined ticket for Felbertauernstrasse and the nearby Grossglockner mountain pass is available for €40.50 (a saving of €4).

As a mostly single lane road, B108 is not an immediately obvious alternative to the A13 Innsbruck-Verona autobahn, or A10 Salzburg-Villach, which it lies midway between.

However, as well as being considerably less congested, and scenic – see below – it is an interesting option for drivers heading between Munich and north east Italy (Venice and Trieste) or Slovenia.

Since the roads at both ends are regional roads too, drivers do not need to buy the Austrian motorway vignette.

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Map showing Felbertauernstrasse top centre right and Grossglockner top right. Click to enlarge.

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