Traffic is likely to spike by 30 per cent as sports fans head to France for the games from next week and into August, with a huge surge in families travelling next weekend when most schools break up.Dover officials are deploying artificial intelligence to predict traffic numbers, with travellers stranded in jams of up to 20 hours in previous years.
“It’s dragging out that real busy summer all the way through July and August. It’s going to be the busiest since pre-pandemic.” Mr Bannister said: “Since we left the European Union, the border control process has has become a bit stickier. Data from the port and Eurotunnel allows KMRF to rate days as red, amber or green according to the expected level of congestion, with a much higher number of red days this summer.
The network of AI models weigh up factors impacting travel, such as weather, or time of day as well as real-time data like crashes, allowing the port to inform traffic management procedures and try to avoid congestion.