International E-road network

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European Route Sign
European Route Sign
The International E-road network
The International E-road network

The international E-road network is a network of roads in Europe, numbered E1 and up. They cross national borders and are the responsibility of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The network also reaches central Asian countries like Kazakhstan, since they are members of the UNECE.

In most countries, roads carry the European route designation beside national road numbers. Other countries like Sweden have roads with exclusive European route signage. E-roads in the United Kingdom are not signposted at all, and are not recognised by the UK authorities[citation needed], while the Republic of Ireland has started to placed E-route numbers on recent road schemes (2007). Other continents have similar international road networks: e.g. the Pan-American Highway in the Americas, and the Asian Highway Network.

Contents

The route numbering system, defined by UNECE since 1975, went through a major change in 1992 and is now as follows (text and layout slightly modified from the original for clarity of understanding):

Intersection of E42 and E451 from over Frankfurt International Airport
Intersection of E42 and E451 from over Frankfurt International Airport
  1. Reference roads and intermediate roads, called Class-A roads, have two-digit numbers. Branch, link and connecting roads, called Class-B roads, have three-digit numbers.
  2. In general:
    • North-south reference roads have two-digit numbers terminating in the figure 5 and increasing from west to east.
    • East-west reference roads have two-digit numbers terminating in the figure 0 and increasing from north to south.
    • Intermediate roads have two-digit odd (north-south) and two-digit even (west-east) numbers between the numbers of the reference roads between which they are located.
    • Class-B roads have three-digit numbers, the first digit being that of the nearest reference road to the north, the second digit being that of the nearest reference road to the west, and the third digit being a serial number.
  3. North-south Class-A roads located eastwards of road E99 have three-digit odd numbers from 101 to 129. Other rules mentioned in paragraph 2 above apply to these roads.
  4. Class-B roads located eastwards of E101 have 3-digit numbers beginning with 0, from 001 to 099.

In the first established and approved version, the road numbers were well ordered. Since then a number of exceptions to this principle have been allowed.

Two Class-A roads, namely E47 and E55, have been allowed to retain their pre-1992 numbers, E6 and E4 respectively, within Sweden and Norway. These exceptions were granted because the excessive expense connected with re-signing not only the long routes themselves, but also the associated road network in the area, since Sweden and Norway have integrated the E-roads into their national networks and they are signposted as any other national route. These roads maintain their new numbers from Denmark and southward, though, as are other European routes within Scandinavia.

Further exceptions are E67, going from Estonia to Poland (wrong side of E75 and E77), assigned around year 2000, simply because it was best available number for this new route, most of E63 in Finland (wrong side of E75) E8 in Finland (partly on the wrong side of E12 after a lengthening around 2002) and E82 (Spain and Portugal, wrong side of E80). These irregularities exist just because it is hard to maintain good order when extending the network, and the UNECE does not want to change road numbers unnecessarily.

In the road listings below, a hyphen ('–') indicates a land road connection between two towns/cities—the normal case—while an ellipsis (three dots, '…') denotes a stretch across water (with or without ferry connection).

The E-road network in Belgium
The E-road network in Belgium
The E-road network in Bulgaria
The E-road network in Bulgaria
The E-road network in Germany
The E-road network in Germany
The E-road network in the Netherlands
The E-road network in the Netherlands
The E-road network in Poland
The E-road network in Poland
The E-road network in the United Kingdom and Ireland
The E-road network in the United Kingdom and Ireland

E 30

The European routes are signposted with the green number sign at right.

There are different strategies for determining how frequently to signpost the roads.

  • Sweden, Norway and Denmark have integrated the E-road numbers into their networks, meaning that the roads usually have no other national number.
  • In most of the countries the E-roads form a network on top of the national network. The green signs are frequent enough to show how to follow the roads, but do not usually show how to reach them. In Belgium, E-numbers are associated with motorways: for those, only the E-number is signposted, while for non-motorways only the national number (if any) is shown.
  • In some countries, like Germany, E-roads are poorly signposted, making it difficult to follow them. Drivers have to use the national network.
  • In Ireland in July 2007, the N11 bypass in Gorey, Republic of Ireland, opened with "E-01" markers added to route confirmation signs, this was the first road with E-road markers in Ireland. Since then a recent new section of the N8 opened with "E-201" markers. A new version of the Traffic Signs Manual 1996 may confirm this new policy but has yet to be published.
  • In a few countries, such as the United Kingdom or Uzbekistan, the E-roads are not signposted at all (In the UK, E-roads are not recognised, even by the official authorities).

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