Traffic jam threatens this weekend around Antwerp
Those who want to go to (or around) Antwerp by car must take heavy files into account. From 9 p.m. Friday evening to 5 a.m. Monday morning, emergency repairs are being carried out on the Merksem viaduct on the Antwerp ring road in the direction of Ghent.
On an average Saturday and Sunday in December, about 60,000 vehicles use the viaduct daily. If all that traffic suddenly has to cross one place of four lanes, as this weekend, a traffic jam is feared.
In October, a similar urgent intervention was already needed in the other direction of travel. Then the files were all in all not too bad. But now things are different: it’s the last weekend before Christmas. It’s a shopping day. And a large ‘delegation’ of shoppers from the Netherlands is expected. Chaos guaranteed.
The Flemish Traffic Center therefore asks road users to avoid the area around the work as much as possible, especially on a daily basis. If you want to go to the center of Antwerp from the north, you are advised to use the P+R towers Luchtbal and Merksem, and transfer there (free) to public transport to the city. You can park for free on Saturday and Sunday in those two P+Rs.
If you want to avoid the ring towards Ghent in Merksem, you can take a detour via the uncertain part of the ring, the R2 in the port.
The Liefkenshoek tunnel will be toll-free towards Ghent when there are files, and that was already the case on Saturday morning.