In preparation for the Easter celebrations, the special traffic operation launched by the DGT begins today, and will be in two stages, the first being this weekend between 15:00 on Friday and 24:00 on Sunday 29th March, and again for Easter, commencing at 15:00 on Wednesday, 1st April, until 24:00 on Monday, 6th.
In total, it is expected that 13.5 million journeys will be made during the Easter period, an estimated 4.7% increase on the same period last year. This weekend, it is anticipated that there will be 3.4 million trips.
The highest density of traffic is expected to occur on Friday evening and Saturday morning, mostly heading from inland areas such as cities towards coastal and mountainous areas and those with touristic attractions.
Once the tourists have arrived at their destinations the concentrations will be around leisure and retail areas, as well as the beaches, and with the weather forecast looking particularly good this year, the beaches are expected to be particularly attractive. In addition, many of the visitors will visit the religious celebrations and parades, and so a concentration is expected around those, details of which can be obtained from your local tourist information office.
For the second phase, it is expected to start to get busy on the Wednesday, but then even busier on the Thursday as places as Cataluña and Valencia start to join in the celebrations, with some 8 million trips overall expected.
At the end of the holiday period, the tourists then return to their inland homes, and so the concentration will move from coastal and tourist zone back inland, and are likely to be busier as, unlike the arrival, the end is not as staggered. Sunday afternoon and evening are expected to be particularly bad, but the holiday continues into Monday in some areas, and so that will also pose a problem for traffic flow.
There will be 10,000 Guardia Civil traffic officers on duty, supported by 13,000 road maintenance operators. As well as around 800 officers and employees of the 8 control centres managing the movement of traffic flow. There will be 120 check points and special lanes in 25 sections of the road network, monitoring more than 800 kilometres of roads. There will also be eyes in the sky as the 13 DGT helicopters will be on hand too, including those equipped with Pegasus radar, available to alert and control any incident on the roads.
For our part, all we have to do is plan our journeys to ensure we get to our destinations safely and in the optimum time, avoiding the busiest periods where possible, allowing extra time for our journey, keeping a safe speed and distance at all times, taking regular breaks and safe in the knowledge that we are being looked after every step of the way during this Easter period, to keep us all safe to enjoy many more in the future.
Traffic information can be obtained from the DGT website, http://infocar.dgt.es/etraffic/, and their Twitter feed, https://twitter.com/informacionDGT
