Two Black Mornings in August, and the Roads That Absorb the Exodus

Italy's state police put the morning of Saturday 1 August at black on its August traffic calendar, the top warning level, reserved for the most severe congestion. The rest of that weekend sits at yellow or red, meaning heavy traffic and possible critical conditions. Only one other morning this month carries the same black marking: Saturday 8 August.

The calendar is colour coded rather than descriptive: yellow for heavy traffic, red for heavy traffic with possible critical conditions, black for critical. Every Friday in August carries a yellow or red warning. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are consistently the best days to move.

The routes that take the strain are the southbound motorways linking the big cities to the holiday coasts: the A14 from Bologna to Taranto, the A1 between Milan and Naples, the A2 from Salerno to Reggio Calabria, the A19 and A29 in Sicily and the junctions around Trieste.

What the calendar really documents is a country that still takes its holiday at the same time. The esodo is not a traffic event that happens to fall in August; it is the reason August looks like this, and it is why a published calendar of the worst mornings is a more useful piece of public information in Italy than it would be almost anywhere else.