Autobahns might be safer than other German roads but fatal accidents on derestricted sections are much higher than those with speed limits say new figures.

Also, fine details unclear on first Paris car-free day as clean-up operation starts along the capital’s major roads. Problems with new cross-border fines in Belgium. Street parking is on average €5 per hour in Amsterdam. January’s Eurotunnel fire caused by ‘arcing event’.

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RENEWED CALLS FOR AUTOBAHN SPEED LIMITS

New figures reveal significantly higher death rates on derestricted sections.

Photo @DriveEurope

The derestricted sections of German autobahn come in for regular criticism, mostly recently in May 2013 from the now deputy chancellor Sigmar Gabriel.

The perennial argument in favour of no motorway speed limits is that the autobahns are far safer than other roads.

Now opponents are focusing their attacks on this piece of received wisdom.

In a report on motorway safety in Europe, published today, the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) says, ‘The number of deaths per kilometre of motorway was 30% lower on stretches of German motorways that have speed limit compared to those without limits.’

It recommends a speed limit on all German motorways. The most recent figures, from 2008, say two thirds of the motorway network has no speed limit.

Jacqueline Lacroix of the German Road Safety Council (DVR) and a member of ETSC says, ‘Speeding is a major cause of concern on our motorways. High differential speeds and failure to keep a safe distance can result in very severe rear-end collisions. Measures to reduce speeding are therefore urgently needed.’

According to the ETSC, deaths on German motorways fell from 694 in 2004 to 387 in 2012 but rose by 11% in 2013 even as the overall death rate fell by 7%.

In common with France and the UK, Germany is expected to announce another rise in accident fatalities for 2014.

Whether the ETSC’s latest intervention will have any effect is doubtful. As Clemens Gleich said in his 2013 eBook The Traveller’s Guide to the German Autobahn, ‘A general speed limit seems un-German to us, has a socialist stench, maybe even something French about it.’

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Paris will hold its first car-free day, on Sunday 27 September, the city’s contribution to European Mobility Week and ahead of the major COP21 climate conference to be held in Paris in December. Precise details are scarce as yet, including the area the car-free zone will cover, whether buses and taxis will be allowed on the streets and whether it will be voluntary for drivers or, like Brussels, enforced with a stiff fine. In the meantime, Paris will be actually trying to do something nice for drivers. €5m in extra funding was voted through on Wednesday to urgently clear rubbish from around the capital’s motorways, specifically the A1 into town from Charles de Gaulle airport. Photo @Anne_Hidalgo, Paris mayor.

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roundup: BELGIUM. Only drivers from France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg and Switzerland are sent remote speeding fines because of translation difficulties reports La Derniere Heure (via Xpats.com and Deredactie.be). The authorities say they are working on a fix. Belgium signed up to the original 2013 cross-border fines directive but the countries mentioned, plus Spain, were already included in an earlier info sharing agreement. NETHERLANDS. The average price of street parking in central Amsterdam is now €5/hour according to a new national parking survey (via DutchNews.nl). Forty percent of municipalities raised prices this year by an average 6% (up 20% in Haarlem) to an average €2.66/hour. Cheapest is Zoetermeer near The Hague at €1.28/hr. Street parking is generally cheaper than parking garages (though is normally time-limited) but there is usually at least one cheaper garage says the survey. The cheapest garage parking we know in Amsterdam, by the Central Station, is €32.50 per 24 hours. CROSSING THE CHANNEL. The fire in mid-January which severely restricted Eurotunnel services for several days was started by an electric arc as the train entered the tunnel on the UK side says the interim report from the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB). Despite the power supply briefly tripping, the fire itself wasn’t discovered until 22 minutes later when the train was still 21km from the French side. Eurotunnel says it has reviewed procedures following ‘arcing events’. A truck driver pulling a refrigerator unit noticed last night, for the first time, that he was loaded onto a covered wagon.

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Long delays and lots of migrants in Calais again as MyFerryLink looks ahead to a last ditch legal challenge.

Also, a new website draws all the attractions together on Scotland’s ‘North Coast 500’ route. Low sun blamed for Belgium morning pileups (and full moon for similar in Latvia). Some good news, finally, for Milan’s beleaguered, brand new A35 BreBeMi motorway. Transport directors on trial for ‘social dumping’. Driver union welcomes France and Germany minimum wage rules.

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ANOTHER BLACK WEDNESDAY IN CALAIS

What will it be like if and when MyFerryLink goes?

The question ‘How is it going at Calais?’ used to mean, how is the weather and are the ferries running to time?

For truck drivers, increasingly it means, are there long freight queues into the port, and are there many migrants hanging around?

Wednesdays seem to be the worst day, and today was no exception.

The alarm was first raised at lunchtime by Tommy Harrison (@Justice4Trucker) who warned of ninety minute delays into the port and immigrants ‘everywhere’.

A few hours later, another driver managed to leave after forty minutes but not before watching ‘hundreds’ of migrants attempting to break into vehicles ahead.

(Meanwhile, it should be said, there were no delays at Eurotunnel freight and drivers were able to pass straight through).

By the evening, drivers faced at least an hour’s wait before check-in, and a further three hour wait for a boat, though by then the migrant gangs had dispersed.

Simon from Boat-Shift Transport was one of those stuck in the queue. He told us via Twitter (@BoatShiftSimon), ‘Such long delays on a ‘normal’ day (no adverse weather, etc). How can it carry on like this?’

We understand the Dover-Calais operators are collectively two ships down due to annual maintenance. However, that begs the question how the route will cope if – or when – MyFerryLink’s three ships are banned from Dover as per the recent Competition and Markets Authority decisions.

The company said it was still optimistic of finding a buyer in an interview with the Dover Express yesterday ahead of its Court of Appeal case next week (the verdict is expected in mid-April).

The sting in the tail is that, should the judgement go against MyFerryLink, an earlier finding by the French competition authorities prevents its ships being sold individually. This all or nothing approach means rival Dover-Calais firms P&O and DFDS are reportedly not interested in taking the ferries on.

Meantime, uncertainty over potential breaches of the drivers’ hours regulations with trucks constantly edging forwards in long queues was addressed this week in a legal advice column on lorry-driver.com.

See below for more truck news.

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There’s no new tarmac as such but the brand new NorthCoast500 website is designed to pull together all the attractions – food, drink, accommodation and landscapes – on the more than five hundred mile circular route around the north of Scotland starting and finishing in Inverness. The Facebook page ‘NorthCoast 500’ is already up and running with a standalone site – NorthCoast500.com – coming soon. In the meantime visitors can register for updates.

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roundup: BELGIUM. Low sun is blamed for a spate of accidents on the eastbound E40 to Brussels this morning. Three separate incidents around Gent, thankfully all without major injury, led to long delays during rush hour. ‘You really need your wits about you between Brugge and Aalst,’ the VRT traffic unit told Deredactie.be, ‘Drivers should moderate their speed.’ Meanwhile, in LATVIA, BTA Insurance says more than 30% of all car accidents took place during full moons reports Baltic News Network. BTA blames drivers’ heightened emotional state during the peak lunar cycle. The next full moon is due tomorrow (Thursday 5 March). ITALY. The ‘Tangentiale Est Esterna di Milano’ (TEEM – east Milan outer tangential), the bypass motorway between the A4 and A1 – to be known as A58 – opens in mid-May. TEEM also connects midway with the A35 BreBeMi motorway which, anecdotally, has struggled to attract drivers since it opened last July (15% discounts are currently being offered to auto toll tag users). BreBeMi shadows the A4 between Milan and Brescia but, despite being shorter, is more expensive while access from the Milan end is, currently, poor. Hopes are high that A58 will finally relieve the traffic blackspot that is Italy’s second city. In the east, anyway. FRANCE. The trial of six executives from international haulier Norbert Dentressangle, charged with ‘illegal subcontracting’ over the employment of 1,500 drivers from Poland, Romania and Portugal between 2005-2012, started yesterday in Valence reports Le Figaro. It is believed to be the first legal action involving ‘social dumping’, drafting in workers from abroad to undercut local labour. ‘The trial is clearly a test for the company but we are prepared for it,’ said the chief exec last week. The judge deferred proceedings until 5 May to consider a dismissal motion from the defence. MINIMUM WAGE TRUCKS. The European Transport Workers Federation says France and Germany were merely enacting existing EU laws on posting workers abroad when they both recently introduced new minimum wage rules for all truck drivers on their territories. ‘We welcome the commitment of France and Germany to enforce this requirement,’ says Robert Parrillo, president of the ETF Road Transport section. He even thinks the rules should apply to transit drivers and backs it up with a full legal opinion, see here.

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A Finnish man earns a huge fine for speeding. Just a few clicks less would have saved him more than €50,000.

Plus, a quick look at the famous Alpe d’Huez in the French Alps. Local currency only to pay for fuel and most other things in Belarus. Motorway fuel strike this week in Italy. Brittany Ferries no-frills Etretat out of action until May, for passenger services anyway.

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MONSTER FINLAND SPEEDING FINE

Salary dependent penalties sees fine top €50,000 for just 20kmh more than the limit.

No excuses for speeding in Finland. Photo via Finnish Transport Agency, Liikennevirasto.fi

Monster speeding fines are the bread and butter of Finnish tabloid newspapers apparently and it’s no surprise when penalties can reach ten of thousands of euros for what, in other countries, may be seen as relatively trivial offences.

Millionaire businessman Reima Kuisla finds himself splashed across the headlines today after being fined €54,024 for speeding at 103kmh in an 80kmh zone last weekend.

Angry Kuisla wrote on his Facebook page, ‘Ten years ago I wouldn’t have believed that I would seriously consider moving abroad. Finland is impossible to live in for certain kinds of people who have high incomes and wealth (via YLE News).

Finnish traffic fines depend on salary with penalties calculated on a ‘day fine’ basis*, each one worth up to one sixtieth of monthly income.

Kuisla’s offence was judged to be worth eight day fines so – on a salary of €6.5m in 2013 – the amount quickly added up.

The sting in the tail is that the whopping fines regime kicks in at 20kmh more than the speed limit according to local @getpalmd. Just 4kmh less and the fine would have been a fixed penalty.

In January the Italian Moncenisio test team was fined €400 after being caught at 74kmh in a 50kmh zone. Penniless student @djzanta told us then that the rules incentivise him to drive at more than 20kmh over the limit…

The record speeding fine in Finland was earned by Nokia boss Anssi Vanjoki in 2002 who was forced to pay €116,000 after being caught at 75kmh in a 50kmh zone.

*The Guardian has more info on day fines – daily disposable income after tax minus living costs and an allowance for dependents. Kuisla’s worked out to be €6,750.

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Most famous as a regular stage in the Tour de France, Alpe D’Huez is still a must-drive for mountain fans. Around 35 miles south east of Grenoble in the French Alps – off the D1091 Romanche Valley road to Briancon, at Le Bourg d’Oisans – D211 rises in 21 hairpin bends, at a maximum gradient of 13%, to 1860m (6102ft) with a handy loop back (D211F) around the town. Thanks to the relatively low summit it’s open all year round though at the moment it’s covered with snow says @AlpedhuezFrance. Do you fancy that, with chains? Photo Laurent Salino, Alpe D’Huez Tourisme, Alpedhuez.com

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roundup: BELARUS. As of 2 March, drivers can only pay for fuel using Belarusian roubles according to Belta News Agency. In fact, the new rule applies to purchases made in most places apart from duty-free shops. ITALY. In a long-running dispute, motorway fuel station managers will strike from tonight at 22:00 until the same time on Thursday. The law however requires a minimum level of service, at least one service station open every 100km. Italy has the third highest unleaded95 price in Europe at an average €1.611 today, and the third highest diesel price at €1.514 according to Fuel Prices Europe. CROSSING THE CHANNEL. Brittany Ferries no-frills ‘economie’ ship Etretat – which sails between Portsmouth and Le Havre in the week and Portsmouth and Spain at the weekend – will be out of action for passenger services until May. The issue is with the stabilisers (the below the waterline fins which keep the ship level in rough seas, essential for the Bay of Biscay in winter) which need a new part manufacturing reports @FerrymanThe. In the meantime, Eretat will run the calmer Portsmouth-Le Havre route freight-only. 

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The UK ferry industry marks National Ferry Fortnight with a range of tailored special offers, many aimed at families. Book in the next two weeks for travel throughout the year.

Also, Turkey unveils plans for the word’s first tripledecker tunnel. Holiday border queue misery Turkey-Bulgaria. Three charged in Serbia migrant minibus crash. An avalanche buries drivers in Norway. Work to complete Antwerp’s notorious R1 ring road starts in 2017.

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NATIONAL FERRY FORTNIGHT SPECIAL OFFERS

A round up of the discounts only available for the next two weeks, mostly for travel throughout this year.

Condor Ferries is offering free upgrades on its brand new Condor Liberation fast ferry for National Ferry Fortnight, see below. Photo courtesy of Austal.

All six ferry operators running services between the UK and the Continent have tailored offers to mark National Ferry Fortnight starting today.

Most need to be booked before 15 March but many apply to travel throughout the year, including the Easter and Summer holidays. Click the operator links for more, or see #NFF2015 on Twitter.

P&O – half price Club Lounge access (normally £12pp) and/or pets travel for free (normally £15 each way per pet Dover-Calais) if booked before 15 March for travel until 31 December.

DFDS – 500 free day return tickets available to Dover-France customers – on a first-come-first served basis – or a free two night Amsterdam minicruise with Newcastle-Amsterdam bookings (extra passengers from £22pp). Selected departures until 11 December if booked by 15 March.

MyFerryLink – free upgrade to flexible MyChoice fare, i.e. no amendment fee, just the difference between the original fare and the new one for bookings until 13 March for travel until 10 May.

Also, free child’s meal with every adult meal for crossings 27 March-10 May, including Easter holidays. Both with booking code NFF2015.

Condor Ferries – free upgrade to Ocean Plus class on brand new Condor Liberation if booked before 15 March. Online only using code NFFUPGRADE for travel before November excluding selected peak dates and sailings to and from France.

Brittany Ferries – first two kids (under-15s) travel free including a free cabin and cot for day time crossings UK – France. Book before 17 March for travel until 30 September excluding some peak dates.

Stena Line – kids, pets and bicycles travel free between Harwich and the Hook of Holland throughout 2015 if booked before 15 March.

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The world’s first tripledeck tunnel will open in Istanbul in 2020 it was announced on Friday. Stacked tunnels are suddenly all the rage since Paris’ A86 ring Duplex Tunnel showed the way in 2009 and, now, the A2 in Maastricht. Escape routes and ventilation can be contained in a – relatively simple – single bore structure. The 17m diameter Istanbul tunnel will stretch 6.5km under the Bosporus just to the north of the city centre at a cost of €3.5bn. It’s one of a number of massive infrastructure projects in the Turkish megacity currently, including the Marmaray rail tunnel, which opened in 2013, the Eurasian (road) Tunnel set to open next year and, this year, a third Bosporus bridge, at the north end of the Strait, and a new airport.

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roundup: TURKEY-BULGARIA. A national holiday in Bulgaria tomorrow has led to a shortage of border guards and big border delays reports Novinite.com. Up to 11km queues of trucks at Kapitan Andreevo and 10km at Lesovo built up over the weekend. The situation is unlikely to improve before Wednesday. SERBIA. Three people are under arrest after the horrific crash involving 54 illegal immigrants packed into a minibus near Lescovac late last month reports B92.net. One man died and two more are still seriously injured. All the migrants are from Bangladesh and had crossed from Macedonia. NORWAY. Four cars containing eleven people were buried by an unexpected avalanche late yesterday afternoon on the E39 road north of Bergen, at the Masfjorden Tunnel at Olsbotn. The weight of snow crushed the windscreen of one car inflicting minor injuries on two occupants. All others escaped without injury reports NRK.no (via @Nordic_News). Parts of central Norway, further north, had been under amber alert for avalanche earlier in the week. BELGIUM. Work to complete Antwerp’s fearsome R1 ring road, one of the most jam prone stretches of road in Europe, will start in 2017 reports Decredactie.be. The long-running project, first proposed in 1995, called the Oosterweel Link, will complete the ring road in the north west, under the Schelde River and through the docks area at a total estimated cost of €3.3bn. Initial plans had been for a succession of tunnels and bridges, with trucks banned from the existing Kennedytunnel in the south, but the latest thinking is to bury the road entirely. No end date has been announced.

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Drivers just cannot get a break in the French Alps this winter though this time it was nothing to do with the weather.

Also, floods threaten roads in northern Spain. Eurotunnel and Dover-Calais ferry fares are the closest for years says the Telegraph. Hauliers and the Spanish government are at odds over plans to force trucks onto toll roads. Dutch police deploy Moscow-style parking cars.

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DAY LONG DELAYS IN THE FRENCH ALPS, AGAIN

Boulder blocks traffic to Belleville with the backlog jamming roads to other resorts too.

The boulder on RD117. Photo via val-thorens.co.uk

The timing could hardly have been worse. Less than 24 hours before one of the busiest changeover days of the season, a one hundred ton boulder toppled onto the main RD117 road in and out of the Belleville Valley in the French Alps.

Access to the popular resorts of Val Thorens and Les Menuires was blocked in both directions from Friday morning.

For the second successive Saturday then – and for the third time this winter – drivers heading into the Alps faced day long delays albeit nothing to do with the weather this time.

Worse still, and despite being warned to postpone their journeys for an extra day, the hundreds of cars heading to Bellville were forced to queue on the N90 from Albertville, blocking other drivers attempting to reach nearby resorts such as Courcheval and Val d’Isere, among others.

A detour road, RD96 bypassed the boulder but traffic heading down the mountain was prioritised, for Saturday morning initially and then all day.

Ultimately it was a case of under-promising and over-delivering. A surprise announcement from local police at 17:30 said in fact RD117 has been successfully cleared and was open in both directions. However, it took several hours from then to clear the remaining queues on N90.

Alps’ police are unlikely to look back on this season fondly.

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The huge snow dump in the Pyrenees earlier in the week has turned into massive flooding in parts of north east Spain this weekend. The River Ebro has burst its banks in places and is threatening the same in Zaragoza. The major road network has escaped unscathed so far. See the latest at DGT.es. Photo, the A-68 at Tudela, Bilbao-Zaragoza, yesterday via @InfoEmerg

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roundup: CROSSING THE CHANNEL. A good roundup of all UK-France/Spain crossings from the Telegraph’s Nick Trend. He says price rises on the Dover-Calais route due to new EU clean fuel rules, and a five percent price cut on Eurotunnel fares this year, mean ‘the lowest differential between tunnel and sea crossings for many years’. SPAIN. Hauliers and government are arguing about whether the new plan to offer trucks fifty percent discounts on motorway tolls to get them to divert from main roads should be voluntary or compulsory says InfoTransport.es. The plan does not apply to the entire motorway network, just those stretches where main road and motorway shadow each other. Trucks would still be allowed to use lesser roads direct to the point or origin or destination. The plan is due to start in the second quarter of this year. NETHERLANDS. Dutch police are experimenting with Moscow-style camera cars to more efficiently monitor parking in the tourist hotspot of Delft near Rotterdam reports AutomNews.com. Despite cross-border prosecution for traffic offences not starting until May 2017 for UK, Irish and Danish drivers, parking fines are already able to be collected within the EU under separate legislation.

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Last updated 18:00GMT, Friday 27 February.

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TODAY: France: 5-15cm of snow expected on Alps motorways, 10:00-14:00, affecting the A40 Bourg-Bellegarde, A43 Lyon-Chambery and A48>Grenoble (heavy rain A40 earlier but no snow as yet). Snow chains needed to access some ski resorts, certainly Alpe d’Huez. Also fresh snow south west Germany/ west Austria, Lake Constance-Stuttgart-Bregenz, and A28 east Switzerland. 

Also, on-going weather disruption ferry services Brittany Ferries UK-Spain and knock-on disruption to Portsmouth/Plymouth-Roscoff/St Malo over the weekend. Storm Iceland.

YESTERDAY: flooding and avalanche risk Pyrenees region, Spain and France, see DGT.es (roads marked red need chains, black closed). Access to several ski stations, especially in the west, blocked for the past few days but expected to be cleared overnight Friday-Saturday.

NEWS: Weekend Traffic + Weather, better than last weekend but still busy in the French Alps. A new bus/taxi lane introduced on the Paris A1 in the spring.

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CHANNEL DELAYS: no delays overnight.

WEATHER ALERT: amber alert high winds Spain, floods France, high winds, storm, heavy rain Italy, storm, heavy rain Greece.

WEATHER: windy South of France, heavy rain Greece, thunder Mediterranean.

GOTTHARD TUNNEL: no queues.

MONT BLANC TUNNEL: ‘traffic is fluent’.

MAJOR TRAFFIC DELAYS: A43 westbound Chambery, heavy traffic total delay 45mins.

A58 westbound to Tilburg, earlier accident Oirschot delay down to 40mins.

Earlier:

See Travel/Traffic/Weather for more.

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Poland: in road geek circles the exact route of the fabled 390 mile Berlinka autobahn – between Berlin and what was Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) – is still the subject of excited debate. Only the first 80 miles between Berlin and Stettin (Szczecin) were opened before the war. Another stretch between Elblag and Konigsberg in the east was a single lane only. Poland’s refusal to let the Germans build the so-called ‘Danzig Corridor’ across their own corridor to the Baltic – which split East Prussia from the rest of Germany – was one of the main reasons cited for the invasion in 1939. The original plans showed two roads, one heading via the free city of Danzig (Gdansk) – known as Berlinki – and the other straight to Konigsberg, Berlinka. The latter is the one best remembered and the one forced labour roughly paved in the war years. The section above, the Chojnice bypass – a town, formerly Konitz, right on the old Poland Corridor border – is now DK22. The bypass was only built in 2006 but is now thought to trace the precise route of the original road. More on this when we get a chance for a closer look.

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Weekend traffic: with the school holidays more or less over skiing traffic starts to subside but the French Alps are still expected to be busy if not jammed (a Red Saturday not a Black Saturday says Bison Fute). Drivers heading into the Pyrenees could face more problems, especially in the west, after heavy snow, rain and avalanche alerts this week though the situation is improving with the remaining blockages expected to be removed overnight or tomorrow morning. In Germany the issue will be road works, the A1 Dortmund-Cologne, A3 Frankfurt-Würzburg, A8 Stuttgart-München, A8 Saarlouis-Neunkirchen, A24 Hamburg-Pritzwalk and A44 Essen–Düsseldorf all see closures in places and diversions over the weekend, as does the A1 Linz-Vienna and A23 Vienna in Austria.

Weekend weather: snow in the Alps today followed by a front of wet and windy weather moving in from the west over Saturday and Sunday says the BBC.

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roundup: FRANCE. From the end of April, a southbound lane of the A1 from Charles de Gaulle airport at Roissy into Paris will closed to all vehicles except buses and taxis between 06:30-10:00 on weekdays, as well as a lane on the connecting stretch of the peripherqiue ring at Porte de la Chapelle. Red crosses will be displayed on recently installed gantries to inform drivers when the lane is open. Deputy mayor Christophe Najdovski (@C_Najdovski) tweeted that the A6a would be included too but that is yet to be confirmed (update: a lane on the A6a from Orly Airport to the peripherique will be reserved for buses and taxis from the end of May).

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Last updated 18:00GMT, Thursday 26 February.

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TODAY: on-going flooding and avalanche risk Pyrenees region, see DGT.es (roads marked red need chains, black closed). Some fog northern France, ice warning Vosges Mountains, east France. Weather disruption ferry services Brittany Ferries UK-Spain and knock-on disruption to Portsmouth/Plymouth-Roscoff/St Malo over the weekend. On-going storm Iceland.

YESTERDAY: heavy snow Spain Pyrenees, with flooding in the foothills and with several ski stations closed on France side, Hautacam, Cauterets, Luz-Ardiden, Superbagneres. N20 Puymorens Tunnel re-opened, avalanche risk.

NEWS: Eurotunnel and Kent police air concerns ahead of new Exit Checks due next month. Russia remains part of TIR international trucking system for the time being as secure parking is listed for the first time. The German transport minister is heckled in parliament as he presents the ‘foreigner toll’.

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CHANNEL DELAYS: Eurotunnel freight, busy, increased to 2h00 wait before check-in France + still 30mins UK. P&O Dover-Calais ‘running within 20mins of schedule’.

WEATHER ALERT: amber alert high winds, avalanche Spain Pyrenees, avalanche, floods France Pyrenees, avalanche Norway, fog Poland coast, high winds, storm, heavy rain Italy, storm Greece.

WEATHER: rain France, Norway, showers Italy, Greece.

GOTTHARD TUNNEL: no queues.

MONT BLANC TUNNEL: ‘traffic is fluent’.

MAJOR TRAFFIC DELAYS: R0 ring north Brussels, anticlock, incident west, delay A3>A10 increased to 45mins.

A8 westbound Saarlouis, accident delay 50mins. A81 northbound to Stuttgart, earlier accident Herrenberg, closed delay increased to 3h00+. 

Earlier: now no delay A8 eastbound into Pforzheim, A3 westbound into Regensburg, A3 southbound to Dusseldorf, A10 eastbound Berlin. A3 both ways Frankfurt, earlier incident Heusenstamm no delay westbound; eastbound down to 15mins. A24 northbound from Berlin, breakdown Fehrbellin delay down to 10mins.

See Travel/Traffic/Weather for more.

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Porsche leads a tour of Siberia this week to prove its hybrid technology in subzero conditions. Twelve journalists will share Cayenne and Panamera hybrids across 7,000km in twelve days, from Irkutsk near Lake Baikal – the world’s largest body of freshwater – to Ekaterinburg in the Urals via Novosibirsk, Tobolsk and Stolby Nature Sanctuary, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Temperatures will hover around -20 degrees. Follow along at #PlugIntoSiberia

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roundup: CROSSING THE CHANNEL. Despite the Border Force chief telling MPs two weeks ago he was confident operators would be ready for the start of new Exit Checks next month, John Keefe from Eurotunnel told the BBC yesterday, ‘It’s unlikely the technological solution will be in place by 8 April.’ At the same time, Kent’s police chief told Kentonline that April could see a ‘Perfect Storm’ for passengers as Exit Checks combine with the start of redevelopment work at Dover. RUSSIA. Secure truck parking along roads in the Russian Federation has been added to the International Road Transport Union (IRU) TRANSPark free smartphone app under a new agreement signed this week. Meanwhile, Russia will remain part of the international freight TIR system until at least 30 June, though IRU says it ‘cannot exclude that practical problems could still happen at border-crossing points in Russia in the near future’. GERMANY. The ‘foreigner toll’ received its first reading before MPs in the Bundestag parliament today. As at its previous outing at the Bundesrat upper house last month the bill got a rough ride. Transport minister Alexander Dobrindt was ‘constantly interrupted, vociferously’ according to DW.de. Left Party transport spokesman Herbert Behrens said, ‘The toll should be done away with and the minister too.’ Dobrindt faithfully repeated his by now well-worn line, ‘The toll is fair, reasonable and just.’ The prospective law gets its second and third reading on 26 March and could reach the final stage as early as 8 May.

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Last updated 18:00GMT, Wednesday 25 February.

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TODAY: very busy freight traffic Dover, Calais + Dunkirk, also busy Eurotunnel freight UK. Heavy snow Spain Pyrenees, see DGT.es (roads marked red need chains, black closed), with several ski stations closed on France side, Hautacam, Cauterets, Luz-Ardiden, Superbagneres. N20 Puymorens Tunnel re-opened (again, see below) avalanche risk. New storm warning Iceland.

Weather disruption this week ferry services Brittany Ferries UK-Spain and knock-on disruption to Portsmouth/Plymouth-Roscoff/St Malo over the weekend.

YESTERDAY: snow chains needed Val d’Isere, French Alps (except 4×4 vehicles), see @SimplyValdIsere. N20 Puymorens Tunnel French Pyrenees closed temporarily – twice – avalanche risk. Poor visibility east Germany. Dense fog A2 Graz, south Austria. Freezing rain Harz Mountains, north Germany + storm alert Iceland.

NEWS: surreal Swedish roadscapes from a Berlin-based ‘photo-manipulation’ artist. A British man survives a spectacular Mallorca mountain crash as Cadiz’s new bridge gets an opening date. Swiss campaigners demand action on Gotthard freight movements. It seems foreign drivers won’t get away with the Gothenburg congestion charge after all..

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CHANNEL DELAYS: DFDS Dover-Calais delay 15mins. P&O Dover-Calais running ‘within 20mins of schedule’. Eurotunnel freight UK, busy, still 30min wait before check-in. Condor Ferries Clipper delay 2h00, weather.

WEATHER ALERT: red alert snow Spain Pyrenees + amber alert high winds, coastal storm Spain, Portugal, floods, avalanche France, heavy rain Sardinia, Sicily, snow, high winds Italy, high winds Norway, Croatia, heavy rain Greece.

WEATHER: unsettled central + east Mediterranean and more rain France.

GOTTHARD TUNNEL: no queues.

MONT BLANC TUNNEL: ‘traffic is fluent’.

MAJOR TRAFFIC DELAYS: A84 westbound Caen-Avranches, earlier vehicle fire, delay increased to 60mins.

A2 northbound into Maastricht, accident, road works, delay 55mins.

A2 eastbound from Hannover, accident Peine, delay 1h40. A44 southbound into Kassel, earlier accident, delay down to 50mins.

Earlier: now no delay A1 northbound into Bremen. A27>A8 eastbound Lille-Tournai, earlier accident, road works, delay down to 30mins. A46 eastbound from Dusseldorf lane closed delay down to 5mins. A35 northbound into Strasbourg, road works delay down to 10mins.

See Travel/Traffic/Weather for more.

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Cut & Fold: Swedish surrealist photographer Erik Johansson is noted for his twisted landscapes. Citing Dali and Magritte among his influences, Johansson only uses images taken by himself, mostly around his parent’s home in Gotene central Sweden (not far from Beowulf’s burial mound at Skalunda, incidentally, on the southern shore of Lake Vanern). See more at erikjohanssonphoto.com.

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roundup: SPAIN. A tourist survived a spectacular 40m barrel roll off the scenic Andratx-Estellencs road in the west of Mallorca yesterday suffering only cuts and bruises. Photos of the scene show severe damage to the car. The British man in his forties, according to local reports, tested positive for alcohol. Meanwhile, the controversial Puenta de la Pepa bridge across to Cadiz is almost complete and will open in May says TheOlivePress.es. SWITZERLAND. Failure to switch freight from road to rail violates the constitution say campaigners after a new report. The government target – set after a referendum in 1994 – is a limit of 650,000 freight movements through the Gotthard Tunnel, two years after the new railway Base Tunnel opens in 2016. Current journeys – 567,000 in the first half of 2014 alone reports SwissInfo – make that difficult to achieve. The Alpine Initiative group wants a daily internet auction of transit passes with prices capped just above the rail freight rate. SWEDEN. Despite a local referendum last September, when 60% of voters rejected Gothenburg’s only recently introduced congestion charge, the council has yet to cancel the scheme. A political party has now submitted a motion to force the council to recognise the result according to Goteborg Daily. The issue is that an ambitious package of mainly public transport improvements, including a railway tunnel, is dependent on the revenues from the congestion zone. The council says it decide what to do next in the spring. Since 1 January 2015 all foreign cars entering Gothenburg during the day have to pay. The charges vary depending on the time of day, up to a maximum 60SEK (£4.60). See ePass24.com for more.

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Third time lucky perhaps for a proposed fast ferry service from Weymouth, a much needed boost for the port, and a crossing time to challenge the Dover Strait.

Also, Porsche produces a snazzy retro-satnav unit for its early cars. An unhealthy crop of drivers fall foul of a speed blitz in eastern France. Spanish trucker fined £2k on-the-spot in the UK. EU pays to upgrade Denmark chargers. Serbia drink drive limit lowered as a van overloaded with illegal immigrants crashes near Lescovac. Brittany Ferries new no-frills ship is available to book, and it is revealed 2014 was another – very – good year for DFDS, even on the English Channel despite the continuing legal saga about over-capacity.

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NEW WEYMOUTH-CHERBOURG FAST FERRY

Crossing time to rival Dover-Calais.

A proposed new fast ferry crossing between Weymouth and Cherbourg will challenge Dover-Calais for journey time claims the operator.

HighSpeedFerries.com aims to start the route in the autumn ahead of a thrice daily service beginning next summer.

At two hours, the crossing time would rival the ninety minute Dover-Calais sailings.

‘It would be the shortest crossing ever on the Western Channel,’ the director of corporate services Jonathan Packer told the Dorset Echo this week. ‘The terminal-to-terminal time will be comparable with Dover-Calais, and there would be a huge road distance and time saving for travellers between the West of England and Western France, compared with routing via Calais.’

A new ferry service would be a timely boost for Weymouth as Condor Ferries prepares to withdraw next month in favour of Poole. The local council is set to discuss the plan on Thursday.

This would be the third attempt for HighSpeedFerries.com to get the service off the ground having tried previously in 2011 and 2012. Despite the name the company website does not appear to be working.

A prospectus last year – regarding a Portland-Cherbourg service to be run by HighSpeedFerries – said the company was looking for a £4.5m investment in exchange for 80% of the business.

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Porsche has gone to the trouble of designed and building a retro-style satnav to fit, in every sense, its early cars. The unit – which includes a radio, 3.5 inch touchscreen and Bluetooth connection for smartphones – plugs into the standard DIN socket used in every car from the first 911 in the 1960s to the 993 in the mid-1990s and all front, mid and rear-engined models in between. Powered by an 8GB microSD card with arrow, 2D or 3D display, Porsche says it has been tested on numerous trial journeys around Europe. Available now in Germany, in two versions, at €1,184.

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roundup: FRANCE. A 24 hour speed blitz in the Bas-Rhin region in Alsace last week netted a rather large-sounding 559 drivers reports 20minutes. Two were over the limit by more than 50kmh, and eighteen between 40-50kmh, the two highest categories where driving licences are at risk/certain of being confiscated. TRUCKS. Cheshire police found a Spanish truck had manipulated the tachograph to hide movement this morning. The vehicle was immobilised for 24 hours and the driver forced to pay €1,880 in fines and fees says HGV Cop @M6_Patrol. ELECTRIC VEHICLES. More than €1m in EU money will be spent upgrading 40 of 46 Danish charging stations (€25k+ each) to interoperable fast chargers by 31 December, ‘to allow different types of electric vehicles from all over Europe to travel freely in Denmark and serve as best practice to other European countries,’ it says in a statement. SERBIA. The blood alcohol limit is being reduced from 0.3mg/ml to 0.2mg/ml. Meanwhile ‘young people’ will also be barred from driving cars with more than 107hp to counter a recent spate of ‘horrible’ accidents reports B92.net. Meanwhile, forty illegal immigrants were injured this morning, several critically says dw.de, when the van they were in swerved off the motorway at Lescovac, 190 miles south of Belgrade. From Bangladesh, Nigeria and Syria, the migrants are believed to have crossed the border from Macedonia. CROSSING THE CHANNEL. Brittany Ferries new ‘economie’ no-frills UK-France-Spain ferry ‘Baie de Seine’ is now available to book with first sailings on 11 May (UK-France). The cut-price crossings – from £79 each way two+car – started last year with sister ship Etretat, proved wildly popular and were quickly booked up for the entire summer. Also, another good year last year for DFDS as turnover rose by 6% (to $1.95bn) and the profit measure by 18% (to $218m). ‘The North Sea, English Channel and acquisitions were the primary drivers of improved performance,’ it said, interesting since a prime mover behind the still on-going Eurotunnel/MyFerryLink competition case is the supposed over-capacity on the English Channel, specifically Dover-Calais. However, DFDS says, ‘most of the growth [of 9%] was achieved on Dover-Dunkirk’.

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It was a miserable end to half-term skiing holidays for many as a whiteout hits the major roads in the French Alps on Black Saturday, but the delays didn’t stop there.

Also, snowmobile and pedestrian segregation in Finland. German police impose a mega on-the-spot speeding fine due to lack of ‘info sharing’. Belgium sees 2015’s first proper Monday morning traffic jams. Farmer road protests set to ‘shake Poland’ this week. Sadly, no Estonia ice roads this year.

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A BLACK AND WHITE SATURDAY

Drivers and passengers left asking why operators not better prepared.

‘Picture of the day,’ said @TRAFvacances. Rescue efforts hampered by drivers stopping by the side of the road to fit snow chains. But what choice did they have?

Despite advance warnings for one of the busiest days of the winter holiday season, ‘Snowmaggedon’ hit the major roads in the French Alps on Saturday stranding five hundred people overnight.

The storm first hit the A40 between Macon and Geneva at around nine o’clock before heading south to the A43 Lyon-Chambery and A48 Lyon-Grenoble by lunchtime.

The A40 was free by late afternoon but the A43 and A48 remained closed overnight.

Debbie Wake (@docdebbie) said, ‘A40 France stationary for 7 hours! Everyone predicted Black Saturday traffic and snow. Why weren’t gritters out/ roads clear?’

Exactly as the similar sudden snow on the N90 Bourg-Moutiers-Albertville last month, rescue efforts were reportedly hampered by drivers stopping by the side of the road to fit snow chains.

British drivers then faced hours’ long delays at Eurotunnel later as a sudden glut of passengers descended during the night.

Sunday night saw further queues. Passengers arriving at 22:00 faced a four hour delay as an IT glitch and cancelled trains compounded queues which only finally cleared at 05:00. 

@Veronica_Foote_ asked Eurotunnel, ‘One of your busiest days and the delays are building up due to two cancelled trains… Where’s the investment? Chaos,’ but never received a response.

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Random from @VisitRovaniemi, Finland. ‘Pedestrian underpasses have snowmobile lanes’.

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roundup: GERMANY. A Danish woman, resident in Switzerland, was forced to pay a €1,230 deposit on-the-spot after being caught speeding at 162kmh in a 80kmh zone on the A7 autobahn, presumably between the Danish border and Hamburg, reports the Copenhagen Post. Police demanded the cash because, the paper says, there is no driver ‘info sharing’ arrangement with Switzerland. It may have its wires crossed; the current cross-border prosecution rules do include all EU countries – except, until May 2017, the UK, Ireland and Denmark – plus Norway and Switzerland. BELGIUM. The return to work after half term saw 2015’s first proper Monday morning rush hour. Traffic so far this year has been relatively muted on the first day of the working week – traditionally when Belgian roads are at their busiest – but today, with heavy rain in the west and snow and ice in the east, and accidents on the E40 eastbound into Brussels and R1 ring road in Antwerp, there was a combined total of 450km of jams first thing, easily beating last year’s maximum of 380km reports Deredactie.be. POLAND. Farmers are set to re-run protests this week, possibly tomorrow. The past two Wednesdays have seen major road blocks around the country, especially in Warsaw. One man tells TheNews.pl the protests will ’shake Poland’. ESTONIA. A mild winter means the ice roads will not open this year reports the Baltic Times. Traditionally there is a 3.5km ice route opened between Haapsalu, the Noarootsi Peninsula and Vormsi island, and between the West Estonian islands Hiiumaa and Saaremaa.

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