See the traffic from cyberspace

PARIS - Ten million people were stuck in a "virtual" traffic jam over the weekend as they attempted to visit France from the comfort of their own computer screens.

The launch of a free aerial photo site, allowing surfers to zoom in on any part of France down to the size of a dustbin, proved an enormous success. It also proved a logistical disaster.

The new site - www.geoportail.fr - opened by national mapping agency IGN was hopelessly inadequate to meet demand. Only one in five of those who tried to enter the site managed to do so for more than a few seconds.

The organisers promised to expand capacity, and to ration access.

Geoportail, the forerunner of a European Union-wide project, is intended partly as France's response to Google Earth launched last year.

The group behind the French site claim it will be more detailed, more consistent and clearer than Google.

Users will have access to 400,000 aerial photos and are able to bring into focus details half a centimetre long.

IGN said Geoportail had instantly become the most popular French site on the web with 10 million attempted hits in the first 48 hours.

"This fantastic response encourages us to expand but it also well beyond what we expected," an IGN spokesman said.

- INDEPENDENT