Platform:Visitors to Bordeaux for the Rugby World Cup should be warned that getting around the region might take longer than they expect. For the first time in three years of driving through France during the summer months, we were stuck in a traffic jam leaving the motorway. Living in Dublin I should be used to stationary motorway traffic, but it's not that usual in France, writes Sheila O'Flanagan
Although one in six people earns a living from the wine industry, Bordeaux is also a major French port and heavily involved in the aerospace and defence sectors, in addition to having reinvented itself as a conference centre and host to worldwide rugby aficionados. So with all that activity going on, perhaps it's not surprising that there should be a bottleneck on a Friday evening. All the same, it was a novelty.
There was another difference on the French motorways this year. The number of trucks seems to have quadrupled. Not just at Bordeaux, but on the entire Nantes-Atlantique route down the west coast. French industry was on the move - during the summer! People are crediting recently elected president Nicolas Sarkozy with getting more traffic on the roads (though obviously whether or not you think that's a good thing depends on how long you spend sitting in a jam).
There is no doubt, however, that there is - in some parts of the country at least - a greater urgency about the French this year to get things done, no matter what the time of day. That's despite the fact that it will be next month before workers will be able to put in overtime at a rate of 25 per cent over the hourly wage - exempt from taxes. This is Sarkozy's way of weaning the population off the sacred 35-hour week.
(Last year we arrived near Biarritz to find that every shop, even the "convenience" store, appeared to have closed before 6pm.)
Sarkozy is also looking at further tax breaks with the aim of bringing a worker's total tax liabilities, including local taxes and health contributions, to about 50 per cent of annual income. Lots of initiatives then from the new president, but analysts reckon that labour reforms will still cause him some headaches. Some people may not yet be ready to put the convenient into convenience.
Nevertheless, there is a mood for change in France. Perhaps they are stung by the fact that, in a country which saw higher growth than the European average during the 1990s, GDP in this decade has grown at one of the slowest EU rates.
Proving that it is possible to mismanage a decade of strong growth, the government, instead of using that strength to underpin the economy, brought in a raft of social measures which ultimately acted as a disincentive to job creation.
It's hard to know whether the current reforms will continue at Sarkozy's initial breakneck speed and whether the French will be able to cope with the fact that the roads are busy 24/7.
Bordeaux has made a big effort to make the city more attractive for tourists and industry alike as well as for Rugby World Cup visitors. From an Irish regional viewpoint, it sees itself as having good connections to the rest of France and the outside world. It boasts of being less than three hours from Paris by TGV - about 550km. Merignanc airport will get you to Paris Charles de Gaulle which is, admittedly, a hub airport.
If the people in Shannon who are campaigning to retain the slots to Heathrow are doing so because they want connections from a hub airport, there are plenty of other European airports that might fit the bill just as well. If they simply want to go to London, there are infinitely more pleasant options than Heathrow, where you usually spend at least 30 minutes circling around waiting for a landing slot.
Of course if we had a decent road from Shannon to Dublin, travellers could make it to the capital in about two hours and then catch a Heathrow-bound flight. If we had a high-speed train they could do it in half that time.
On our travels through France, our average speed was 100km/h. From Cork to Dublin on our return, it was 60km/h. In France you can (with the occasional exception) plan your journey time. In Ireland it's a lottery. The French could learn from us about incentivising work. We still have a lot to learn about infrastructure.
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