The Netherlands is both a very densely populated and a highly developed country in which transport is a key factor of the economy. Correspondingly it has a very dense and modern infrastructure, facilitating transport with road, rail, air and water networks. In its Global Competitiveness Report for 2014-2015, the World Economic Forum ranked the Dutch transport infrastructure fourth in the world.
Transport in the United Kingdom is facilitated by road, rail, air and water networks. Some aspects of transport are a devolved matter, with each of the countries of the United Kingdom having separate systems under separate governments.
The M4, originally the London-South Wales Motorway, is a motorway in the United Kingdom running from west London to southwest Wales. The English section to the Severn Bridge was constructed between 1961 and 1971; the Welsh element was largely complete by 1980, though a non-motorway section around Briton Ferry bridge remained until 1993. On the opening of the Second Severn Crossing in 1996, the M4 was rerouted over it.
The island of Ireland, comprising Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, has an extensive network of tens of thousands of kilometres of public roads, usually surfaced. These roads have been developed and modernised over centuries, from trackways suitable only for walkers and horses, to surfaced roads including modern motorways. Driving is on the left-hand side of the road. The major routes were established before Irish independence and consequently take little cognisance of the border other than a change of identification number and street furniture. Northern Ireland has had motorways since 1962, and has a well-developed network of primary, secondary and local routes. The Republic started work on its motorway network in the early 1980s; and historically, the road network there was once somewhat less well developed. However, the Celtic Tiger economic boom and an influx of European Union structural funding, saw national roads and regional roads in the Republic come up to international standard quite quickly. In the mid-1990s, for example, the Republic went from having only a few short sections of motorway to a network of motorways, dual carriageways and other improvements on most major routes as part of a National Development Plan. Road construction in Northern Ireland now tends to proceed at a slower pace than in the Republic, although a number of important bypasses and upgrades to dual carriageway have recently been completed or are about to begin.
A trunk road is a major highway with a specific legal classification in some jurisdictions, notably the United Kingdom, Sweden and formerly Ireland. Trunk roads are planned and managed at the national-level, distinguishing them from non-trunk roads which are managed by local authorities. Trunk roads are important routes usually connecting two or more cities, ports, airports and other places, which is the recommended route for long-distance and freight traffic. Many trunk roads have segregated lanes in a dual carriageway, or are of motorway standard.
A routenumber, designation or abbreviation is an identifying numeric designation assigned by a highway authority to a particular stretch of roadway to distinguish it from other routes and, in many cases, also to indicate its classification, general geographical location and/or orientation. The numbers chosen may be used solely for internal administrative purposes; however, in most cases they are also displayed on roadside signage and indicated on maps.
A concurrency in a road network is an instance of one physical roadway bearing two or more different route numbers. When two roadways share the same right-of-way, it is sometimes called a common section or commons. Other terminology for a concurrency includes overlap, coincidence, duplex, triplex, multiplex, dual routing or triple routing.
The autostrade are roads forming the Italian national system of motorways. The total length of the system is about 7,016 kilometres (4,360 mi), as of 30 July 2022. There are also 13 motorway spur routes, which extend for 355 kilometres (221 mi).
A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway, and expressway. Other similar terms include throughway or thruway and parkway. Some of these may be limited-access highways, although this term can also refer to a class of highways with somewhat less isolation from other traffic.
A national primary road is a road classification in Ireland. National primary roads form the major routes between the major urban centres. There are 2649 km of national primary roads. This category of road has the prefix "N" followed by one or two digits. Motorways are prefixed "M" followed by one or two digits.
The A4 motorway, also called Rijksweg 4, is a motorway in the Netherlands running southwards from Amsterdam to the Belgian border near Zandvliet, north of the city of Antwerp. The 119-kilometre-long (74 mi) A4 is divided into two sections; the first and longer section runs from Amsterdam to the A15 near the city of Rotterdam, while the second section starts near Heijningen, where the A29 and the A4 meet, going to the Belgian border.
Cheshire West and Chester is a unitary authority area with borough status in Cheshire, England. It was established on 1 April 2009 as part of the 2009 local government changes, by virtue of an order under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007. It superseded the boroughs of Ellesmere Port and Neston, Vale Royal and the City of Chester. The remainder of the ceremonial county of Cheshire is composed of Cheshire East, Halton and Warrington. Cheshire West and Chester has three key urban areas: Chester, Ellesmere Port and Northwich/Winsford.
The European route E751, or E751, as defined by the Declaration on the Construction of Main International Traffic Arteries of 1975, and subsequent documents which amended the treaty, is an east–west Class-B branching European road route. Originating in Rijeka, Croatia, where it diverges from European route E61 before passing through the Kanfanar interchange, the route connects Pula, Rovinj, Poreč and Umag in Croatia with Koper in Slovenia. The route provides a high-performance road link in Istria and Slovenian Littoral. Unlike most routes, the E751 centers on the Kanfanar interchange and has three arms, each extending to Rijeka, Pula and Koper. The total length of the route, including all the route arms, is 160 km (99 mi).
European route E34 forms part of the United Nations International E-road network. It connects Zeebrugge, the major seaport of Bruges, with Bad Oeynhausen, a German spa town located beside the River Weser at the eastern edge of North Rhine-Westphalia. At Bad Oeynhausen the E34 links to the E30, a major pan European east-west artery. It also passes, relatively briefly, through the Netherlands, following the southern by-pass of Eindhoven. Within Germany the route follows from south-west to north-east the full length of North Rhine-Westphalia.
European traffic signs present relevant differences between countries despite an apparent uniformity and standardisation. Most European countries refer to the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals. The convention has been adopted by the following countries : Albania, Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. The convention has not been adopted by Andorra, Ireland, Iceland or Malta.
D2 state road is a trunk state road in the northern areas of Croatia that spans from the border crossing with Slovenia at Dubrava Križovljanska in the west via Varaždin, Koprivnica, Virovitica, Našice, Osijek, Vukovar, ending at the Ilok–Bačka Palanka Bridge border crossing with Serbia. The road is 347.9 km (216.2 mi) long.
European route E 233 is a west—east European Class-B road part of the International E-road network, running from Hoogeveen in the Netherlands to Cloppenburg in Germany, passing by the Dutch city of Emmen and the German city of Meppen. The road runs concurrently with four other roads over its course, first with the Dutch A37 from its western terminus to the German border, then with the German B402 up to Haselünne, from there on it follows B213 up to northern Cloppenburg, and on the last 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) of the B213 concurrency it also runs concurrent with B72, which it then follows up to its eastern terminus at the A1, which is also part of E 37. The road has a total length of 132 kilometres (82 mi), of which 41 kilometres (25 mi) in the Netherlands and 91 kilometres (57 mi) in Germany.
With 139,000 km of public roads, the Netherlands has one of the most dense road networks in the world – much denser than Germany and France, but still not as dense as Belgium. In 2013, 5,191 km were national roads, 7,778 km were provincial roads, and 125,230 km were municipality and other roads. Dutch roads include 3,530 km of motorways and expressways, and with a motorway density of 64 kilometres per 1,000 km2, the country also has one of the densest motorway networks in the world. In Dutch a motorway is called "autosnelweg" or simply "snelweg"; other expressways are just called "autoweg". According to a 2004 estimate, some 12,500 km of road remain as yet unpaved.
The Netherlands has a public road network totaling 139,000 km, one of the densest in the world. Its use has increased since the 1950s and now exceeds 200 billion km traveled per year, three quarters of which is by car, making it among the most intensely used road networks. In 2019, the World Economic Forum ranked the quality of Dutch road infrastructure as the best in Europe and second to Singapore out of 141 countries.
