At this time of year nearly every Frenchman travels south on his holidays, and I traveled west and unfortunately we met up at Lyon. The announced delay was 20 minutes, but of course, avoiding the delay took much longer!

The wicked French decided to close a major road for repair work on the tunnels of the Boulevard Périphérique Nord from 15th July to 29th August.
Traveling there my TomTom took a diversion, but on the return journey, yesterday lunchtime, the TomTom radio receiver did not find the local radio signal, so there was no digital update on traffic conditions. Later the radio signal was working again.

I checked today on Google Maps, and there is no mention of this closure. There is a good autoroute diversion to the north of Lyon, I do suggest you avoid this part of Lyon!

http://www.peripheriquenord.com/

https://www.google.ch/maps/dir/Ville...d45.781828!3e0

"The wicked French"

Lol.

We came across that road closure on our return from holiday on July 17th but there was no prior warning, just a closed road.
Fortunately having lived there for five years I was able to find my way around it but it's not so easy for other people.

Having said that and based on my experience of actually living there I would avoid driving in or around Lyon at all costs wherever possible during the months of July and August.

Can I suggest the following website for French traffic:

http://www.bison-fute.gouv.fr/index.html

It's pretty good and there is an English option.

Just a little heads up. The périphérique nord is yet again closed from 17th July to 28th August.
Apparently they need to do security work on the tunnels and have decided that the busiest time of the year is the best time to do that for the second year in a row. I'm sure they only do it to piss off the holidaymakers.

http://www.peripheriquenord.com

The diversion signs are either useless or non existent so unless you know your way around Lyon I suggest you avoid it altogether at the moment. The Rocade Est is a good way to avoid the mayhem.

We were there yesterday and there were huge traffic jams along the river banks and going into the Fourviére tunnel ( but that's nothing new). As we know our way round the city we managed to avoid them all.

On the upside I saw no evidence of the pollution charge thing being implemented. We hadn't got the badge as we hadn't got time to get it before leaving for holidays and we weren't intending on going into the city in any case.
If we get a fine in the post later I'll update this thread.