Paris Olympics
Keeping You Moving
With less than 150 days to go before the Olympic Games open in Paris, authorities are becoming clearer about traffic plans and the ability to access areas of the city during the event.
Firstly, we would remind our customers and trade partners that the city of Paris is a large area and the residential areas of the city extend a great distance from the center. For this reason, unless your customer is moving to or from a home close to an Olympic venue, it is unlikely their move will be affected.
Current Preparations
Work will begin on building the infrastructure in the center of Paris from March 15, 2024. This work will affect areas like the Concorde Square and Trocadero Square, making driving to these areas more difficult. Please advise us in advance if you have a customer moving to or from these areas.
Road Restrictions
As shown above, police authorities have confirmed that approximately 185km of reserved lanes on roads and highways leading to Olympic venues will be established in both directions for vehicles accredited by the organizing committee, emergency and security vehicles, and public transport.
The Olympic lanes will likely be in place from July 1, 2024, until September 15, 2024. These reserved lanes will not be continuous, allowing our trucks to escape the flow of traffic to access specific areas of the city.
Ports and Airports
We anticipate that sea ports and airports will operate normally for ocean freight and airfreight shipments. Le Havre, the main port of entry for shipments to Paris and Northern France, is 200 kms (125 miles) from the city.
Challenging Areas?
The greatest challenges will come for any shipment moving to or from an area close to an Olympic venue. The areas surrounding the venues have been color coded based upon security concerns with a gray zone for the venue itself, and red and blue zones for the near vicinity.
In the blue zones, traffic will be regulated but access can be gained by application, and we will be provided with a QR code to gain entry to these areas for the entire Olympics.
Although it is unlikely that anyone will be moving to or from a red zone, access may be gained by making a request for each move.
Advanced Planning is Important
As advised, it is unlikely that your move will be impacted during the period of the Olympic Games but Neer Service is here to help you. As soon as you are aware of the origin or destination address, please advise us in order that we can reassure you or make plans for any necessary approval.
Maersk Top On Reliability
Maersk has come top of a ranking of the most reliable shipping lines based advertised transit times.
The ranking compiled by maritime analysis company, Sea-Intelligence, found that the Danish line was on time on 67.7% of their expected transit times, followed by MSC at 65.9%, and French-headquartered CMA CGM on 62.8%. Evergreen and Wan Hai made up the Top 5 most reliable lines.
At the back of the pack were Yang Ming who only kept to advertised transit 50.7% of the time, with HMM at 51%, and ONE at 54.1%. All shipping lines have improved since 2022, but these figures are far behind the average reliability between 2012-2019, when the reliability of container ships was between 70%-80%.
