Busy weekend on the roads expected

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/CbjV6)
The DGT has warned us to expect a very busy weekend on the roads, during the first official holiday weekend of Spain. It is expected that there will be 4.675.000 trips for the first weekend of August, between 15:00 on Friday July 31 and 24:00 on Sunday August 2.

As well as the in-land Spanish residents expected to converge on the coastal towns, it is expected that the North African border posts will also be busy, as many people return to their home land during the first phase of Operation Transit 2009.

Specifically, DGT warns of an increase in vehicle movements, mainly affecting roads in Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha, Valencia, Murcia and Andalusia. Problems are concentrated at the exit of the big cities and at the end of access roads to tourist areas.

The worst times during the weekend are expected to be between 17:00 and 22:00 on Friday and early on Saturday. The DGT recommend trying to plan your trip to avoid the busiest times.

There will be 9.300 Guardia Civil officers on duty to accompany your journey, 130 more than last year, and over 700 officials and technical staff specializing in traffic management centres.
There will also be 1.183 traffic cameras, 2.073 data collection points and 1.822 message boards.
In addition to that, there will be 760 speed traps around the country, 522 at fixed points and an additional 240 vehicles equipped with devices to detect violations whilst in motion.

In total, the expected movement of vehicles on the roads in August was 43.450,000. DGT said that in the same month last year 216 people died in road accidents, although this is less than half that in 2003 (457), of which 36 were motorcyclists.

You can monitor the flow of traffic yourself on the internet, with live updates from the DGT website, here.