Do you have any motorways in yours coutries or meybe any projects in future??

Depends on what you consider beeing a motorway.

Lithuania has invested A LOT into upgrading the road network in 90's and we also squeezed everything possible on this aspect from Soviet Union, thus generaly Lithuania has an excelent infrastructure.

Highway network by Lithuanian standarts.
http://foto.terpe.lt/inkelti/20070709/image.gif

In reality though - A1, A2, A3, A13 and partially A5, A6, A8, A9, A12 could be defined as a highway
....................................................................................................
Some statistics:

Highways - 1750,05 km
County roads - 4947,90 km
Regional roads - 14626,90 km
...................................................................................................
and couple of photos:

Intersection of A1 and A6 near Kaunas
http://foto.terpe.lt/inkelti/20070709/FOTO1.jpg

A12 near Siauliai, photo by (c)John from miestai.net
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/johngang/roads/road_a11/IMG_6017.jpg

A2 near Panevezys, photo by (c)John from .....
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/johngang/roads/road_a2/IMG_5953.jpg

Intersection of A1 and A5 near Kaunas, photo by (c)Goolfietis from miestai.net
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/golfietis/IMG_4687.jpg
....................................................................................................

Trafic intensity, though the data is very old - 2002
http://img434.imageshack.us/img434/9986/picture20dy.jpg

Latvia at the moment has no motorways. By motorway I mean a dual carriage road with no interruptions (like waiting to turn, traffic lights, etc) and an emergency lane on the bank of the road.

There are a total of around 150km (?) or so of dual carriage roads outside the cities, these however cannot be classified as motorways, as they don't always have proper multilevel intersections, emergency lanes, etc.

Latvian roads in general have been largely neglected during the 1990s and huge amount of investment is needed now (the usual story). There are a lot of road construction work ongoing, though, with priorities being restoration of all state and local roads. New road construction or upgrades to dual-carriage/motorways are at the moment only on the drawing boards, with very few exceptions.

The exceptions being the following: a dual carriage stretch from Riga in Sigulda direction (~20 km) is to be upgraded to motorway status with all the necessary attributes being constructed, the stretch will be a pilot project both in motorway construction as well as private-public partnership (PPP) in large infrastructure objects.

A new possibly dual carriage road / motorway will be constructed in the direction Riga - Ogre, around 25 km.

If the pilot PPP project suceeds several other dual-carriage ways shall be upgraded, map (http://www.lad.lv/LV/?i=766).

Sorry for talking only about plans, since at the moment Latvia has nothing in motorway segment to show and drive on.

I would like to add couple of more points about the plans - at the moment there are ambitious plans to fix the existing road network until 2013, and in the longer term - to construct two East-West motorways crossing the entire country in the form of the tipped letter "X" with intersection next to Riga.

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa10/sqoobie/lv_roads.jpg

Several more maps in PDF format for those who are interested:

Road repair/construction plan for 2007-2013 (http://www.lad.lv/LV/Download/?t=1&i=423), you can clearly see which roads are potential motorways.
Prospective road network plan (http://www.lad.lv/LV/Download/?t=1&i=421) by year 2025, with the future motorway network visible


EDIT: Decided to take screenshots from those PDFs:

Road construction until 2013, dual carriage ways clearly visible:

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa10/sqoobie/map2013.jpg


Road construction until 2025, large motorway network:

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa10/sqoobie/map2025.jpg

Estonia officially doesn't have even 1km of motorway, but we have ~100 km-s of I class road, which is quite similair to a motorway. I have some pics too:
Tallinn-Narva. I class road is about 65 km long.
http://static.flickr.com/47/148314500_6dbafe52cd.jpg
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/1293/maantee1an1.jpg
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/6952/maantee2om2.jpg
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/3294/mnt18dk9.jpg
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/4238/mnt20mb6.jpg
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/1281/mnt21ei9.jpg
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/1185/mnt22vq0.jpg
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/7324/mnt24wv0.jpg
Tallinn-Tartu. I class road is about 20km long:
http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/4161/mnt1sg8.jpg
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/8486/mnt2jb5.jpg
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/7528/mnt4am7.jpg
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/373/mnt5yx6.jpg
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/3136/mnt9gt8.jpg
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/2656/mnt11dr0.jpg
Tallinn-Pärnu: I class road is about 15km long
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/6705/img5119bd4.jpg
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/7697/img5121cw3.jpg
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/4264/img5122lu7.jpg

About the future: There are no plans to build any motorways in Estonia, though there are plans to convert some road sections into I class road. I made a map too:
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/1016/eesti2015copyas1.jpg

Here's a rather old (2000) map

http://foto.terpe.lt/inkelti/20070709/131_0801_roads_00_big.gif

Lithuania has such good road network but the biggest number of traffic deaths in S&B(And Europe too) :nuts:

Here's a rather old (2000) map

Via Baltica between Kaunas and Latvian border was not dual-carriage way, when I went there in 2003. You sure Lithuania has that many dual-carriage ways? I suspect that over-enthusiastic Lithuanians submitted all their main roads as "dual-carriage" ways.:lol:

Also, Latvia had more dual carriage roads in 2000 than seen on that map, I edited it to match the real situation.

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa10/sqoobie/edited_cut.jpg

Via Baltica between Kaunas and Latvian border was not dual-carriage way, when I went there in 2003. You sure Lithuania has that many dual-carriage ways? I suspect that over-enthusiastic Lithuanians submitted all their main roads as "dual-carriage" ways.:lol:

Well i commented it in my first post. Truth is that most of the roads shown as "dual ca... " are not entirely "dual ca... ", parts, sometimes even rather big ones, are missing, but roads are still beeing upgraded on a big scale in Lithuania.

Lithuania has such good road network but the biggest number of traffic deaths in S&B(And Europe too)

We also like forcing the pedal to the bottom, especially when we're drunk-driving. We're probably leading in EU on that one too... :)

^That's really not a thing to be proud of. And more about Lithuania: When national roads in Lithuania are in a great shape then smaller roads are absolutely horrible. Seems like you have forgotten them, while repairing your major roads. Maybe things have changed since I was there in 2004....

BUT...Estonia has quite crappy roads too, only that our major roads are worse and smaller roads are better than in Lithuania. I think that all 3 Baltic states really need to improve traffic safety, because at the moment, the number of accidents is way too big. In the first 6 months of 2007, already more than 100 people have been killed in traffic, and our population is only 1,3 million!!! One of the biggest problems is speeding. Because police control is so week, people feel that noone is watching them and push pedal to the metal. Then it's drunk driving...The number of traffic accidents caused by drunk driving has decreased, but is still too big. We should also improve our roads to improve traffic safety. This weekend I drove from Helsinki to Rauma and back. Practically every smaller city has lots of bike roads around it and these roads rarely cross highways on the same level, there is a tunnel or a bridge instead. And every bigger crossing of rural roads has viaducts etc.That helps to improve safety too.

yep, we have crappy roads in estonia, but some months ago i heard statistics that we have most land rovers per capita in the world :D

^That's really not a thing to be proud of. And more about Lithuania: When national roads in Lithuania are in a great shape then smaller roads are absolutely horrible. Seems like you have forgotten them, while repairing your major roads. Maybe things have changed since I was there in 2004....


I was talking with some sarcasm... ;)

Not at all, maybe you just stumbled up on one or two, but that doesnt necessarily mean they all look like that - not even close acctually.


Here's a couple pictures of more rular roads. photos by (c)Xmaster from miestai.net
http://foto.miestai.net/inkelti/20070206/DSCF0183.jpg

http://foto.miestai.net/inkelti/20070206/DSCF0184.jpg

http://foto.miestai.net/inkelti/20070206/DSCF0188.jpg

yep, we have crappy roads in estonia, but some months ago i heard statistics that we have most land rovers per capita in the world :D
And I heard that we are the most Hummerized country in the world(Biggest number of Hummers per 100 000 people):bash: I really don't have a clue why anyone would ever want to buy a Hummer....:nuts:

^^ There might be two possible reasons. In a roadless country it is better to get oneself a SUV than shake all the time(especially in our towns and cities road conditions are just awful, because major construction works were held in soviet times last) plus the pointless boasting mentality, which has seriously infected all developing nations :bash:

I am also working with a kind of motorway project - inside Riga. See www.ziemelukoridors.lv - and sorry that the Webpage of the project is old.

This one won't be true motorway because the allowed speed would be only 90 km (may be even 70 km) - but it will be mostly elevated or underground, no one level interchanges, brake line all the way, fences and light all the way, special sercive to remove broken cars etc.

Formally Latvia won't have any motorways in coming 20 years at least - but in reality we will have lots of roads which in other countries would classify as motorways.

But nowadays our roads are by far the worst in EU - I am sure. But lots are happening to improve it finally.

There is a project to reconstruct a 10km long section of Tallinn-Narva road, which is currently in a very bad shape - a 30 year old concrete road - and it has 2+2 lanes. After the reconstruction about half of the section will be 3+3 lanes. Cause this section is right at the border of Tallinn, it has about 35 000 cars per day. Here you can see pics of how it will look: http://www.mnt.ee/atp/failid/tn2006est.pdf

And the construction plan of Tallinn's ringroad:
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/1434/tlnpldmapbigra0.jpg
There are plans to build a smaller ringroad too, because the bigger one takes a too big loop. But I don't know, if this small ringroad is going to be a 4 lane road - I sure hope that. The plan includes building a 400 m tunnel under the airport's runway....a thing that makes this project unrealistic, atleast in Estonia.
http://www.postimees.ee/foto/1/0/8350145e5d7e14521e.jpg

As no one has updated this topic I'll do so.

A somewhat significant 6.8 km new section of Tallinn-Tartu road was finished recently.

http://f.postimees.ee/f/2008/09/15/74910t41h5bf3.jpg

http://f.postimees.ee/f/2008/09/15/74911t41h58d3.jpg

The project consisted of a dual carriageway in the length mentioned before, three bridges (one of them a 124m long pedestrian bridge, picture no. 2), 2.4km of noise barriers, street lights etc.

The cost of the project was 531 mio EEK (34 mio EUR) of which 275 mio EEK was provided by the EU.

The next stage with a length of 15km is planned to start construction during next year (although I consider it too optimistic)

Lithuania has such good road network but the biggest number of traffic deaths in S&B(And Europe too) :nuts:

If there isn't barriers on both sides of the road - it is not a motorway. The probable reason for the bad numbers are because Lithuanians drive superfast on dual carriage ways regardless their status:D:D:D:)

The construction of Mäo bypass(On Tallinn-Tartu highway) will(or has already) start this year. It'll be 6,4 km long with 2 intersections, 1 crossing and 2,7 km of noise barriers. 2,3km of the Pärnu-Rakvere highway that crosses Mäo bypass, will also be reconstructed.

But the 15km of expressway from Aruvalla to Kose will have 3 intersections, 2 crossings, an animal crossing and 6,9 km of noise barriers.

Don't know where else to post this, but there are some quite remarkable news concerning traffic and roads in Estonia.

Apparently, the number of deaths on roads will stay below 100 this year (currently 95). The remarkable part being that less than 100 deaths was previously recorded as far back as 1946 while for example, in 1991 the number was 491 people.

This is obviously partly affected by the economy, but road safety and public awareness has also improved greatly over the last 10 years.

So great news for the still decreasing population of Estonia!

Good News :) Btw,it would also fit into Infrastructure & Mobility part of SSC / Highways / Estonian Highways thread.

Here:http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=773706

Btw,it would also fit into Infrastructure & Mobility part of SSC / Highways / Estonian Highways thread.

Here:http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=773706
^^ Thanks. I will do so!