The Spanish motorway (highway) network is the third largest in the world, by length. , there are of High Capacity Roads () in the country. There are two main types of such roads, autopistas and autovías, which differed in the strictness of the standards they are held to.
History Between 1990 and 2012 Spain had one of the highest rates of motorway growth in Europe.
The first motorways named autopista were financed using sovereign debt.
At the end of the 1980s, and before Olympic Games in 1992 in Barcelona, the autonomous Catalan government was interested in increasing the speed limit on new motorways. Between 1987 and 1990, the operations at four new motorways were transferred to private companies, three by the Catalan region and one by the national government.
Building of new sections of autovia was increased before the 1992 Olympic Games and the Sevilla World Fair.
The 1984-1992 National Plan built around 3500 kilometers of new autovia, to reach a network length of 6000 kilometres by 1992, at a cost of 184 million pesetas (around 1 million euros). At the same time, the new autovia standard was closer to the autopista standard, as the old autovia standard was understood as not providing enough safety. This generated increasing project costs.
Since traffic density is generally lower in Spain than France, it was required that some motorways were to be untolled. Despite a lower traffic density, Spanish motorways remain profitable, because tolls are twice higher in Spain than in France.
Between 2005 and 2014, Spain was the EU country which best performed for decreasing fatalities on motorways, with a decrease score of 66%.
Increase of the Spanish motorway network The length of motorways and other roads is expressed in kilometers. It was reported as of 31 December 2015. Sources: Eurostat (road_if_motorwa serie) Rac foundation (EU) (some years only)
Differences between autopista and autovía
The distinction between two kinds of high capacity roads is mainly a historical one, seldom with practical consequences for most but the oldest motorways. Both kinds are divided highways with full access control and at least two lanes per direction. General speed limits for both are mandated by the Spanish Traffic Law as , though there are groups that ask for the latter to be raised to . movimiento140.com asks for the general limits on both autopistas an autovías to be raised to . Specific limits may be imposed based on road, meteorologic or traffic conditions.
Autopistas are specifically reserved for automobile travel, so all vehicles not able to sustain at least are banned from them. Thus, they may not be an upgrade to an older road, since the Spanish legislation requires an alternative route to be provided for such vehicles. Many, but not all, autopistas are toll roads, which also mandates an alternative toll-free route (though not necessarily a freeway) under the Spanish laws. An example is the AP-2 toll autopista, which links Zaragoza with Barcelona through the Monegros desert. In this case, the alternative is the N-II, the national road that preceded the A-2 autovía.
On the other hand, autovías are usually (though not always) upgrades from older roads, and always untolled. In general, slow vehicles like bicycles and agricultural machinery are allowed under certain restrictions so as to not disrupt the traffic excessively or cause any danger. Furthermore, an autovía will most likely follow the original road very closely, only deviating from it to bypass the towns (which are looped around in variantes). Thus, the upgraded road usually serves as the base for one of the two directions of the new autovía, which means the turns can be steeper than in autopistas. All in all, an autovía: Allows traffic banned from an autopista, like bicycles. However, if the autovía is built as a new road instead of an upgrade to an older one, this traffic may be banned too. May have little to no hard shoulders, which are then marked with a solid line instead of the broken line of a transitable hard shoulder. May have acceleration and deceleration lanes that are much shorter than those of autopistas. May have tighter turns and steeper gradients than an autopista is allowed to. If space-constrained, it may even have bus stops on a service lane in the autovía itself, as opposed to requiring them to be placed on a service lane physically separated from the main road. Also if extremely space-constrained, there can be acceleration and deceleration lanes merging on the left lane of the autovía. However, most of the situations listed here only apply to the oldest autovías, and mainly to the radial A-1 through A-6 plus the A-42 near their endpoints, which were the first to be twinned in the 60s into dual carriageways (with at-level intersections) and then were upgraded to limited-access freeways in the 70s-80s, keeping most of their old route unchanged except where the old national road ventured into towns. In those cases, the freeway would make a semi-loop called a variante around the town, leaving the old national road as the access between the freeway and the town.
New autovías usually have perfectly normal acceleration and deceleration lanes, very safe turns and transitable shoulders. Thus, the practical difference between a "new" autovía and a generic autopista is mainly the frequency of exits, which is usually higher in an autovía - upgraded from an old road with many crosses - than in a new, purpose-designed autopista with fewer preconditions imposed on it.
Safety
It is considered that the construction of motorways has helped to increase safety in Spanish roads, while generating a traffic increase.
Fatalities on motorways have decreased from 776 in 2006 to 277 in 2015.
Spain is one of the countries of the EU with most of the road fatalities occurring on motorways rather than on other roads: 16% in 2015. But the same year, taking into account the fact that Spain has a larger network of road than motorways, Spain is one of the countries with the lowest motorway fatality-rates per 1.000 km of motorways, after Finland, Denmark, Croatia, and Hungary: 18.1 fatalities per 1000 kilometers of motorways.
Effective speed
Source:
Colour code Spain uses this color code for highways. Blue for motorways owned by the national government or private companies (tolled). Some regional governments also use blue. Red for all other roads owned by the national government. Orange for first-tier roads owned by regional governments. Green for second-tier roads owned by regional governments. Yellow for third-tier roads owned by regional governments, and for roads owned by provincial governments.
State-managed motorways Most of the high capacity roads in Spain are under the authority of the General Roads Directorate () of the Ministry of Public Works, a department of the central Government of Spain, with the exceptions of Navarre and the Basque Country, the only autonomous communities which have been transferred full powers over all roads in their territories. Usually, the DGC manages all road maintenance, but in the case of the tolled autopistas, the management is commonly delegated to the concessionaire company.
Traditionally, purpose-built autopistas or autovías were assigned names starting with A plus one or two numbers describing their general orientation, while upgraded autovías kept their original names. Thus, the freeway that is currently known as A-5 was still reported as N-V in road signs for years after the upgrade was completed, making it difficult for drivers to know in advance which roads had become autovías. However, in 2003 all Spanish motorways were uniformly renamed with the following criteria: Interurban free-to-use motorways are named "A-" plus: one number, if it is one of the major axes of Spain, being A-1 to A-6 the six radial highways stemming from Madrid, A-7 the highway through the Mediterranean coast, and A-8 the highway through the Cantabrian (northern) coast. Number 9 is reserved for the highway through the Atlantic coast of Galicia, but it is a toll road, so it is named AP-9 (see below). two numbers, elsewhere. Beltways are named with a one or two letter code identifying the city they orbit, plus two digits indicative of the general distance. For example, the M-50 is further from the city of Madrid than the M-40. City access motorways are named similarly to beltways, like TO-21 for a freeway leaving the A-40 towards Toledo. Tolled motorways add a "P" (thus, "AP-") before the dash, and must be clearly identified as such in road signs. For example, AP-9. An exception to this naming rule are the radial toll motorways starting in Madrid, R-2 through R-5 All such names are posted in white letters on blue background, like: A-49 or AP-4 . Note that none of these naming and coloring requisites affect roads under the authority of the Autonomous Communities. For example, the A-8 road in the Basque Country is a tolled autopista, as are the C-16, C-32 and C-33 in Catalonia. Other communities such as Madrid do follow the convention, and have names as MP-203 for a tolled road and M-501 for a free autovía. Furthermore, roads under the authority of the Andalusian government also start with A, but they have longer numeric codes and different coloring.
Interurban motorways
The roads listed below form the backbone of the Spanish high capacity network, connecting all provincial capitals and other major towns and destinations. Until recently, the network suffered from a high radiality, which collapsed the several Madrid beltways and the roads into the city and region. Since the 2000s, an effort to improve the situation was made based on two actions: Build a new set of radial autopistas (named R-n instead of A-n) complementary to the old radial autovías near Madrid. Such tolled autopistas would form a new system of accesses to the capital that merges with their autovía counterparts far from Madrid. The main advantage to these roads is that they allow true fast travel from the first kilometre, while the radial autovías near Madrid (among the oldest autovía stretches in Spain) frequently go through populations, have constant entries and exits and suffer several other conditions which both jam them and make their first kilometres limited to speeds well under the normal limit. Invest heavily in de-radialization efforts that create true cross-country high-capacity axes without passing through Madrid. For example, the A-66 (Autovía Ruta de la Plata) which connects the southern Andalusia with the northwest area of the country, or the A-43 which will connect the western Extremadura region with the east of Spain. *: under construction
†: planned Sign Denomination ItinerarySpans marked with * are under construction Autovía del Norte Madrid (M-30, M-40) — Alcobendas/San Sebastián de los Reyes (M-12) — M-50 — El Molar (R-1) — Aranda de Duero (A-11) — Burgos West (BU-30) — AP-1 — Burgos Northeast (BU-30) — N-I/AP-1 Autopista Radial 1 Madrid (M-12) — † — M-50 — † — El Molar (A-1) Autopista del Norte Burgos (A-1) — N-I/A-1 — Briviesca — Pancorbo — Miranda de Ebro (AP-68) — Armiñón (N-I/A-1) Autovía del Nordeste Madrid (M-30, M-40, M-22) — Coslada/San Fernando de Henares — Torrejón de Ardoz (M-50) — Alcalá de Henares (M-203/M-100) — Guadalajara (R-2) — Medinaceli (A-15) — Zaragoza (Z-40, A-68) — AP-2 Fraga — AP-2 — Lleida (A-22, LL-11) — Cervera (C-25) — Martorell (AP-7) — B-23 — L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (B-10)