550 km long

traffic
Last Saturday in France, cars with vacationers traveling to the south of the country created traffic jams with a total length of 550 km. The French and tourists from neighboring countries rushed to the coast, trying to find relief from the unbearable heat in Europe this summer.
According to local authorities, the current situation on French roads is much worse than last year, when there were much fewer vacationers due to bad weather. Roads around the French capital are clogged with cars. Drivers have to spend more than two hours traveling from the western outskirts of Paris to the eastern suburbs - a distance of 25 km - due to traffic jams on the capital's ring road.
By Saturday morning, a “dead” traffic jam 170 km long had formed near the city of Lyon. The real disaster was happening south of the Loire - cars were parked bumper to bumper and could not move for many hours. Cars and people could not withstand the extreme heat, which made movement even more difficult. The cars covered the distance between the cities of Vienne and Orange in two hours and forty minutes - twice as slow as usual. The main highways leading to the west coast of the Atlantic were paralyzed: huge traffic jams blocked the areas of Orleans and Rennes. In total, traffic jams amounted to a record 550 km.
In addition to ruining the weekend, the heat brought another unpleasant surprise to the French - today, in a number of areas, traditional fireworks displays on Bastille Day had to be canceled due to drought.
ANNA Kommersant-Palcheva

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 121/P dated July 14, 2003, p. 11

France is stuck in a traffic jam