“It’s hell!” At the wheel, stuck in traffic jams as far as the eye can see, motorists in western Paris try to keep calm. They honk their horns as soon as a light turns green in the distance, but at every intersection there’s a traffic jam, since last Friday and the closure of the A13 for security reasons. The entire sector of the N118 entering Paris is completely saturated.
“I have just arrived from Meudon and it has already taken me around twenty minutes to cover 800 meters”, summarizes an elevator repairer. “We can’t wait to know when it will be back in operation!” Exactly, a new situation update is planned this Friday afternoon by the Ile-de-France Regional Roads Directorate, with, perhaps, an adjustment to the reopening date. For now, the portion remains closed at least until May 1st.
“This morning, I broke records, I left at 7:15 a.m. and it will take me 2 hours to reach the 16th arrondissement”
“The closure of the A13, obviously, deports everyone to the southwest and there really, it’s a disaster, there’s been a lot of traffic jams since last week.” explains to France Bleu Paris a sales representative from Versailles, on his way to the capital but stopped for five minutes at the Billancourt bridge intersection, in Issy-les-Moulineaux. “This morning especially, I’m breaking recordshe notes again on his GPS. I left at 7:15 a.m. and it will take me more than 2 hours to reach the 16th arrondissement, so I keep chatting with my dates to tell them that unfortunately, I will be late.”
In the neighboring car, the driver confirms that the alternative routes are all taken by storm. “I come from Antony and it is to avoid the N118 that I am here, but I am not the only one to have obviously had this idea of a detour”, he laughs, philosophically.
The train or the bike rather than the car
Same fate for the driver behind: “I come from Clamart and I go to work in Issy-les-Moulineaux, normally it’s 25 minutes, but here it’s more like 50 minutes, double,” laments a fifty-year-old who is going to pass the milestone: “I’m going to go to work by bike soon, it will be easier.”
“For the last three days, I’ve been taking the train.”explains an employee from the 15th arrondissement. “But today I had no choice, I needed my car“, regrets this resident of Meudon.
Same difficulty in the evening in the direction of returns
And for everyone, it will be the same thing this Thursday evening, in the other direction of traffic. “Yesterday I put 2h40 to get home instead of the usual 17 minutes“whispers another motorist who had no other choice but to get back into her car this morning.
“It’s horrible, horrible, horrible”despairs a young woman stuck in traffic until 8:30 p.m. every evening this week.
