With thousands of kilometers of roads closed throughout France, the Tour de France cyclist and its female equivalent represent a real logistical challenge. The signing of a partnership with Waze for three years should help the two sporting events to better avoid traffic jams.
Always extremely popular, the Tour de France nevertheless imposes a constraint often badly accepted by motorists: thousands of kilometers of road must be closed for the time to let the publicity caravan and cyclists pass. The risk of traffic jams is therefore often significant, especially since countless spectators want to attend the event. But the arrival of a new partner, Waze, should help simplify the lives of drivers, whether they come to see the race or not.
Specific traffic information from July 1
The famous application, which claims nearly 14 million users in France, will now indicate all closed roads, over the next three years. While also specifying the start and finish lines, temporary parking lots, as well as live traffic speeds. This device does not only concern the 21 stages of the men’s Tour de France, the start of which is given this Friday 1er July in Copenhagen, Denmark. Its female equivalent, which starts on July 24 from Paris for 8 stages, will also benefit from it.
More than 4,000 km of road to monitor
In total, it is thus 4,357 km of road that will have to be taken into account by around thirty map editors, all volunteers. With the problem of closures which generally only last a few hours. But Waze has already worked with other major sporting events, such as the French Grand Prix at the Paul Ricard circuit, and has a “Global Event Partners” program which includes 300 event organizers worldwide.
This partnership with the Tour de France is therefore not totally a leap into the unknown for the application, even if the scale of the event will give it a special status. The Israeli company, owned by Google, is taking the opportunity to become an official sponsor of the two cycling events at the same time. You will be able to discover four security vehicles and a security car in the colors of Waze in the publicity caravan for the first time.