THOUSANDS of motorhomes rolled into York for the annual show on Knavesmire.

An estimated 4,000 vehicles have been arriving in the city for the Northern Motorcaravan Show, which runs until tomorrow.

Event organisers and City of York Council said special traffic arrangements introduced to curb congestion had been a success, with far less disruption than last year.

As reported in The Press on Thursday, the council was using its special traffic management system to cope with the influx of traffic.

The system was first used during last year's Royal Ascot at York, and was widely regarded as a success.

Amanda Nightingale, marketing manager for the show, said the new traffic arrangements had worked well, and prevented a repeat of last year's heavy congestion.

She said: "We have not had any problems this year as far as I am aware. We have changed some systems since last year, and we split people as they came in. "Thursday was the busiest day, but it went really smoothly."

Ms Nightingale said they had liaised with the council and York Racecourse to minimise congestion, but sad many of the 2005 problems had been mainly due to the weather.

She said: "Last year, there were a lot of things said about the organisation, but it was largely down to the mud, because we had to bring people on to the field more slowly."

On the show itself, Ms Nightingale said: "It's going really well so far, and the weather has brightened up for us.

It started off a bit dreary but got better.

"It's too early to tell precisely on numbers, but we are on a par with last year, when we had 14,000 day visitors over the three days, and we've not had the bad weather we had last year. We've also got about 4,000 campers and motorhomes that camp on the site, and we think it will be a very similar quantity this year."

A council spokeswoman also said the traffic management system had been successful, and said most people had arrived during non-rush hour times.