Dear friends. I admire too much all your efforts at OSM, but I consider to give it up. Sorry… I would try to jusitfy my opinion, with a rather long message unfortunately. Some points are the same I keep complaining about, since I joined SSC.
The whole thing is a mess and it seems that there are no people in official posts as well as transportation experts with the needed knowledge in how to deal with it. It seems that the poor old guys who projected some numbering systems even back in the 30’s and 40’s and those who created the 1963 system, were by far more suitable than their successors.
The 1963 decree used odd numbers for north-south and even ones for east-west directions. They also treated EO1-EO9 and EO2-EO8 as fundamental with their own ‘systematic’, while odd numbers EO13-EO39 were arranged to be to the west of EO1 and EO51-EO99 to the east plus the Aegean Islands and Crete. Even numbers EO12-EO94 were just increasing form north to south. They also left quite a significant amount of numbers free for further use.
Since 1963 the first logical thing would, one of the things that was stated to the decree: To put the numbers on direction and other information signs. But they didn’t to the vast majority of such signs. Another logical thing was in the cases of ‘new’ roads to give the number to this one and avoid situations like EO1/EO1a, EO8/EO8a etc. It would be more efficient to ‘award’ EO1, EO8 etc. to the ‘new’ roads. This is what they did in other cases – therefore a case of double standards. And finally new numbers should be given according to the above mentioned system. Instead of it they gave EO10 to a north-south road in the Peloponnese and EO52 to a road to the most northern part of the country. According to the 1963 provisions, EO10 could be the today’s EO52, while the road in the Peloponnese could be a continuity or the EO13-EO39 series, probably EO41 (all odd EO4x numbers are unused).
Then the age of motorways came. The first idea in the early 90’s was to use only the E-road number. Then they thought to use the same number of the parallel or the ‘covered’ national road and finally when they started construction of Attiki Odos they decided to create another system. This seems to me to be OK, maybe with two exceptions. The one is the southern part of the A5 and the use of A90 in Crete (may be according to the initial A/EO numbers connection). I would personally give A9 to the Patra – Tsakona motorway and either A10 or A90 to the Cretan North Axis. Both numbers would be OK as I do not thing that in the future Crete will have more motorways, other than this and maybe a second one to the new Irakleio Airport – the latter could take something like A15-A19 or A99 in each case. Another thing is that I find an oddity is to have 3-digit A-numbers while the lesser EO category to go up to EO99; I do not take into account the 1998 3-digit additions. If you count existing and future motorways numbers A1-A99 would be enough – note also that by adding prefix ‘A’ on motorway shields that Axyz becomes less visible on high speeds.
Meanwhile Greek Statistics issued the 1998 update about national roads, ignoring the distinction between motorways and national roads – new motorways like Egnatia or Attiki Odos took also ‘stupid’ EO-numbers. And to make things worse, in 2008 the authorities assigned A-numbers to roads that maybe never become motorways. And this ‘stupidity’ fitted ‘well’ to the discussed new Ptolemaïda – Florina road or the Komotini – Nymfaia one. Both were then signed as A27 and A23 with blue signs. No logic or knowledge at all, or just I am an idiot? Anyway, whatever I am, the first one should at the moment be numbered something like EO3a or with the logic I stated two paragraphs above as EO2/EO3 – sorry, no numbers for the old roads – and when this will become a proper motorway then it may take A27 and EO2/EO3 should be re-instated to the old road. According to my logic ‘A23’ might be numbered as EO49 as a backward continuation to the EO51-EO99 series.
And there is another ‘unlucky’ development. Thanks to Antje and I am aware of a project made by Egnatia Odos consultants, which attempted to put on paper the current situation. This project totally ignored all A-numbers and also includes other arrangements to the 1963/1998 EO numbering (for example, that problematic EO52 (1998) is shown as part of EO51 etc.).
But who cares and who has the knowledge (and the interest)? The proper thing would be to re-number EO’s with a coherent and proper system – ‘proper’ means to justify which road must be considered as ‘national’. But what do you expect from authorities who paid, who knows how much, six (6) ‘experts’ to create the motorway signing guidelines. And then the ‘experts’ just copied the German regulations changing only the… colors (blue to green, gold to blue) and requiring to either use a different system (fonts, arrows, EO shields) in parallel to the existing one for other roads or create the need to change the one which covers the 99% of the network to comply with the one for the 1% of it. The latter seems to be the case since then. By then the authorities had already introduced capital fonts and then re-introduced the mixed case ones, had being using number shields 1, 2, 3,… and then asked for A1, A2, A3,… (A1, A6 and its tributaries and A90 do not care to change their 1, 6, 90 shields – that was the one ‘new’ idea of the ‘experts’) and had started numbering exits with a unique system for all motorways (like the one in Cyprus), then decided to use 1, 2, 3,… for each individual motorway and then the ‘experts’ came and introduced their second ‘new’ idea to number exits by the Km point; surprise, surprise no one has complied with it.
This is why and with GREAT respect to Antje, JayCBR and ALL others who try it at the OSM project, I find the whole effort as ‘windmill hunting’ (see Don Quixote). And I needn’t to mention provincial road numbers appearing as EO’s on signs (see for example exits 25, 25a of the A2), blue E-road numbers (see for example along the A27/EO2/EO3 or EO51), green EO-numbers on rectangles or on motorway shields (see for example at the Larisa 4 exit of the A1 – EO6 is shown as (A)6), exit numbers shown as EO’s (see for example Ovrya K4 exit at the A5 indicated as EO4) etc. etc.
Finally there is no need to say at this point anything about the provincial road network, as it may be pointless, while there is such a mess to the national system. Again sorry, for the long message.