Tag Archives: holidays

On the Road with Smart Bison

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The French love going on holidays in their own country. Annual leave stands at five weeks and school holidays in the summer at two months, so there’s plenty of time to choose from and many lovely places to go to. Mer ou montagne? (Sea or mountains?) you will hear, or Mer ou campagne? (Sea or countryside?) In the end, lots and lots of French holiday-makers will head for the Mediterranean or the Atlantic coast in July or August. As holiday rentals start and end on Saturdays in high season, I’ll let you guess on which day traffic volume is highest.

Queuing for cheap gas at the start of summer holidays

Back when autoroutes were built and expanded and more and more people got cars, a traffic information system slowly developed. It got a big boost after tragedy struck during an August Saturday in 1975 when a combination of heat wave and traffic accidents killed almost 150 people.

Authorities realized they needed to work on three main points:

  • Spreading the traffic over a larger time period
  • Reinforcing alternative itineraries
  • Communicating with the travelers
The Saint Arnoult toll station, with 39 toll gates one of the biggest in Europe, a dreaded congestion point on holiday weekends

It was in this context that Bison Futé (Smart Bison) was created, a character who’d tell people the smart time to travel to avoid traffic congestion, and the alternative routes to take.
You’ll have guessed given the time (1970s) and the name, what this character was. Fortunately, French authorities have gone with the times, and the present logo of Smart Bison is the outline of a bison head made to look like an itinerary. The Smart Bison has become an icon that couldn’t simply be removed.

The Smart Bison website is run by the Transport Ministry, and both website and the Smart Bison Twitter feed will also warn of adverse weather conditions, like heavy thunderstorms.
But its main focus is traffic. Smart Bison will tell you if it’s a green, orange, red, or black day for departures and for returns.

  • Green means normal traffic (including rush hour traffic in urban areas)
  • Orange means heavy traffic with difficult driving conditions locally or generally
  • Red means very heavy traffic with very difficult driving conditions locally or generally
  • Black means traffic is extremely heavy and driving conditions are extremely difficult on the entire road network

For example, on July 12, 2023,  a Wednesday preceding the weekend with the national holiday July 14 falling on the Friday, and school holidays having started the previous weekend, Smart Bison predicted the following traffic conditions for the weekend:

Thursday
Departures
Orange everywhere but red in the greater Paris area
Returns
Green everywhere

Friday (national holiday)
Departures
Orange in the north and northwest, including the greater Paris area
Green for the rest of the country
Returns
Green everywhere

Saturday
Departures
Red for the entire country
Returns
Green for the entire country

Sunday
Departures
Orange for the entire country
Returns
Orange for the entire country
Red for the greater Paris area

The pattern here is easy to spot:
It clearly was a weekend of departures, not returns, with a peak on Saturday (remember those holiday rentals?). The Red for the greater Paris area and Thursday for departures and Sunday for returns indicates many Parisians going away for the long weekend.

Not all that hard to read, is it? So next time you plan to drive in France, consult Smart Bison!

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School’s out

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Summer is here, and that means school’s out in France. Summer holidays (les vacances d’été) start around the beginning of July (or earlier, when younger students are sent home while older students take exams in the school building), and last until the end of August. La rentrée (back to school) is at the beginning of September.

But French students have several shorter breaks (les petites vacances) over the year:

  • All Saints holidays (les vacances de la Toussaint) around All Saints Day (November 1st)
  • Christmas holidays (les vacances de Noël) at, well, Christmas
  • Winter holidays (les vacances d’hiver) in February
  • Spring holidays (les vacances de printemps) around or at least sometime near Easter

Each of these is two weeks long, and though the first two are usually at the same time for everyone, the winter and spring breaks are staggered by region (“zone”) as shown in the map below:

For example, in the upcoming school year 2023-24, the first region to start winter break is Region C, which includes the Paris area. After one week, it is joined by region A. And when Parisians and other Region C residents go back to school, those in Region B start their holidays.
Spring holidays have the same order so that all students have the same amount of weeks between the breaks.
Let’s go one year back: in the school year 2022-23, the first region to start into winter break was Region A, followed by Region B with Region C going last.
There is a regular rotation to ensure all three regions are treated equally, because it can be a long stretch between Christmas break and winter break if you’re in the last group, and a long stretch between spring break and summer holidays if you’re in the first group.

This information might be helpful if you’re visiting France and trying to figure out opening hours of places that say “pendant les vacances de la zone A”.

Enjoy your holidays!

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Letters from Paris goes to Brittany

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It’s that time of the year again – August approaches, and those who haven’t taken their annual leave in July are packing their suitcases for summer holidays. As I explained last year, many factories and businesses close down in August, resulting in a majority of people taking their summer vacation in August rather than in July, the two months of school holidays.

I’ve decided this is as good a time as any to leave Paris for an excursion to my favorite region in France: Brittany. For the next few weeks, my posts will be Letters from Brittany.

As an introduction, have a look at my Twitter feed from early 2020, when I supported the campaign for a Gwenn ha Du (flag of Brittany) emoji by tweeting daily using the hashtag #emojibzh from January 17 to February 09.

This link will show you those tweets in reverse order.

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Paris: closed in August

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If you have ever visited Paris during the month of August, you’ll have noticed many businesses are closed with signs like the ones above. You wonder why they would close in prime tourist season? Let’s go back in time, and you will understand.

Paid annual leave was established in France after the “Front Populaire” won the 1936 elections. From two weeks per year the duration rose to four weeks in 1968. (It’s now five weeks.) Coupled with a reduced-price “annual leave” train ticket, this extended the possibility to vacation by the sea beyond the upper classes who’d enjoyed this privilege since the 19th century.

School holidays were originally meant to leave children free to help their parents with the harvest and the vintage. However, with more and more parents working salaried job instead of the fields, and the rising prosperity level following World War II, the dates were gradually moved forward to start at the beginning of July.

Factories got into the habit of slowing production in August, the hottest month of the year, often obliging their workers to take their paid leave during that time, with a domino effect on suppliers and other businesses, as well as the workers’ spouses.

The long and short of it, and despite a recent tendency to fragment the annual leave into smaller parcels, August remains the favorite time for the French to go on vacation.

A few years back, my friend Sarah Elzas (check out her work) who works for the radio, did a piece on the subject titled “France is fermée” for which she interviewed me among others. Listen to it here:

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