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[E] Spain | road infrastructure • autopistas y autovías

3M views 12K replies 451 participants last post by  alserrod 
#1 ·
I just happened to stumple across it while looking at google earth, and the network they have there is pretty breath-taking, especially by European standards. A few ring roads, tollways, C+D setups, and more freeway to freeway interchanges than I can count, compared to our 2 here in Sydney :( Not to mention plenty of lanes on each.

Anyway, does someone have some context or explaination of what's driving this huge boom in freeways? Wikipedia doesn't have a single thing to say about Madrid's roads, believe it or not, and I can't find much else on the net, so any comments from locals or people in the know, you're welcome.



I mean, jesus christ, just south-east of the city they have 9 full on interchanges covering an area that appears to be practically empty, if i'm missing something I would love to know.

Edit: Oh, nice forums here by the way, glad I found 'em.
 
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#7,622 · (Edited)
Región de Murcia

The Spanish route numbering system makes road mappers crazy. :lol:

I found RM-422 (or is it RM-423) in Región de Murcia. It used to be a part of C-3223 (Almansa - Yecla - Murcia). It was officially renumbered in 2008.

The 2008 road list shows no RM-422, but lists that route as RM-423 (which is a 'green' or second level autonomous road).


The official road map has listed it as an orange RM-422 (first level autonomous road). It is also signed like this on the kilometer markers.


Google Maps applies a red number to it. Which is wrong, but...


... it is based on a red RM-422 shield! :lol:


However the only other road sign with a number on it shows the old C-3223 :lol:


That concludes our daily dose of Spanish route numbering. :cheers:
 
#7,623 ·
You should check Cantabria. Its numbering makes absolutely no sense, with roads changing numbers at random intersections (You come on an "orange road", then suddenly it becomes a "green" one while the intersecting road is an "orange" one with a different number!), new alignments receiving new numbers instead of inheriting pre-existing ones (check around Santillana del Mar), and the Villaverde exclave, where its two main roads have different numbers to those of their implied continuations in the main territory.
 
#7,624 ·
A-334

The Andalusian regional government plans to tender in the coming months the construction of the two missing sections of A-334 (Autovía del Almanzora) between Albox and A-7 (Almería province).

The section between El Cucador and La Concepción should be tendered before the end of the year, while the section between La Concepción and A-7 should follow in April 2018.

Source: http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/315...ovia-almanzora-antes-fin-ano-otro-abril-2018/
 
#7,626 ·
I don't know how would I manage to navigate Spain secondary roads if I did not have GPS navigation devices (before) or phone apps (now). Even with a detailed-ish atlas, all this numbering schemes would be horrible for pre-GPS printed map navigation.
Before GPS I remember that no so many overpasses existed (but roads in the middle of towns or so), thus it was easy to know that in one town, direction XX, later in XX direction YY... and so on.

Wasn't hard at all. Main problems where (a loooong time ago) with crosses in countryshire when maybe a national road had the same standard than a local one or so and wasn't so easy to guess correct directions.


But with single maps haven't had problems to reach anywhere.
 
#7,627 ·
EX-A1

Autovía EX-A1 in Extremadura. The section on these photos opened to traffic in 2005 & 2006.

1.

EX-A1-3 by European Roads, on Flickr

2.

EX-A1-5 by European Roads, on Flickr

3. Autovía del Norte de Extremadura.

EX-A1-6 by European Roads, on Flickr

4. (CC = Cáceres).

EX-A1-7 by European Roads, on Flickr

5.

EX-A1-10 by European Roads, on Flickr

6. Majadas.

EX-A1-13 by European Roads, on Flickr

7.

EX-A1-16 by European Roads, on Flickr

8.

EX-A1-18 by European Roads, on Flickr

9.

EX-A1-22 by European Roads, on Flickr

10. Malpartida de Plasencia.

EX-A1-25 by European Roads, on Flickr

11.

EX-A1-29 by European Roads, on Flickr

12. Plasencia-Este.

EX-A1-33 by European Roads, on Flickr

13.

EX-A1-35 by European Roads, on Flickr

14.

EX-A1-37 by European Roads, on Flickr
 
#7,628 ·
I explain the case where you say CC= Caceres


Until year 2000 car plates had one or two lettres depending of their name.
There were some changes. For instance Ourense changed from OR to OU, Girona changed from GE to GI and Islas Baleares changed from PM (Palma de Mallorca, btw, nowadays only "Palma") to IB .

SH was for Sahara, IF for Sidi Ifni, and there were always for Equatorial Guinea too.


But, regarding only current 50 provinces (plus 2 cities), cases where name wasn't first letter or first two letters were:

SG = SeGovia (S = Santander, SE = Sevilla),
CS = CaStellon (C = La Coruña, CA = CAdiz)
CC = CaCeres (same case)
ML = MeLilla (M = Madrid but didn't exist ME btw)
AB = AlBacete (A =Alicante, AL = ALmería)

and well... CR = Ciudad Real. There were two words, and it is an exemption.

They were quite known because car plates, today they keep being used for other purposes but not so much.
 
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#7,630 ·
a hint....

road names are after car plates according to former province lettre code (for number code it is from 01 = Alava to 50 = Zaragoza plus 51 = Ceuta and 52 = Melilla).

For all of them they took capital province instead of province name.

At first there were several exemptions...

African territories (For instance, Sahara was SH insteade of AA... from El Aaiún, the capital, Layaaoune in French but look at airport code is named after Spanish: EAN), Navarra (NA, when capital is Pamplona) and Las Palmas (capital: Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, province Las Palmas, with three islands: Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. They had GC as car plate)
 
#7,631 ·
According to some forumers (and wikipedia), the traditional Roman numerals used in radial national roads (N-I to N-VI) have been abandoned and now these roads are officially signposted with Arabic numerals (N-1 to N-6). However, the change will of course take place in actual road signs only gradually.

In my opinion, they could also rename N-340 as N-7, N-634 as N-8 and N-550 as N-9.
 
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#7,635 ·
According to some forumers (and wikipedia), the traditional Roman numerals used in radial national roads (N-I to N-VI) have been abandoned and now these roads are officially signposted with Arabic numerals (N-1 to N-6). However, the change will of course take place in actual road signs only gradually.

In my opinion, they could also rename N-340 as N-7, N-634 as N-8 and N-550 as N-9.
Well it turns out that the officials in Fomento's road numbering department, if there's such a thing, are soulless, square-minded individuals with absolutely no love for roads.

What a surprise :D
 
#7,636 ·
Another issue is... when they started building motorways, they set same road system (except for A7, A8 and A9) but only two numbers.

I guess that in some years, not enough numbers for all motorways
 
#7,638 ·
I guess that in some years, not enough numbers for all motorways
Probably you're right in the long term, but for the next 20-30 years there shouldn't be any problems.

We have to take into account that from A-10 to A-99 there are 90 possible numbers for State-owned motorways. Currently only 50 of these possible A-XX motorways exist (including those still under construction, and those numbers so far only used for AP-XX toll motorways).

That means we still have 40 free A-XX motorway numbers. Around 10 of them have already been allocated to projected motorways, which means there are still 30 free numbers. We shouldn't worry at the moment.
 
#7,639 · (Edited)
I make it 51 numbers currently in use on roads that are open (including the non-autovia A79 in Alicante). And there's a few more allocated onto proposed/under-construction routes.

Numbers used for national Autovias or Autopistas* including plans that haven't happened (only about 6 numbers)
1-15, 21-28, 30-33, 35-38, 40-46, 48-68, 71-76, 81, 83, 91

Numbers used for city routes of Alicante (part of national scheme)
70, 77, 79

Number used for Andalucia Autovia (and clearly would have that number if national)
92

That leaves 16-20, 29, 34, 39, 47, 69, 78, 82, 84-90 and 93-99. 26 numbers in total that haven't been allocated under this numbering scheme (so the old numbers for Catalonia aren't included).

*As same numbered Autovia-Autopista pairs are either parallel, or part of the same freeway, the numbers used won't be reused for a different corridor.
 
#7,640 ·
A-16 to A-19 were formerly used in Catalonia. (A-16 and A-19 are now C-32, A-17 is C-33 and A-18 part of C-16). The original A-10 was in Madrid, it was changed to M-11 and then the number got picked up by Navarre (Incidentally I drove all of current A-10 last month). There used to be an A-36 unrelated to AP-36 which is now part of A-7. At one point there was an A-47 planned, which would have run along N-433. A-78 was used for a duplicated section of N-340 between Elche and Crevillente, but it has been dropped since.
 
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