Route nationale
As National Routes ( singular Route nationale; French for, National Road ') highways are called in France, which are used primarily for the national and international transport. Unlike most French motorways their use is free of charge and they can not - unless they do not possess the status of a dual carriageway - be driven by all types of vehicles. They are similar to the federal roads in Germany.
History
Establishment of national roads by Napoleon
The French Emperor Napoleon I created on December 16, 1811 the already existing or under construction highways, a network of imperial roads ( routes impériales ). The main streets of the centrally organized country with the numbers 1 to 14 began in Paris and resulted in a clockwise direction in the different directions. The second-class road with the numbers 15 to 27 linking the capital with their local area. The numbers 28-229 remained the third-rate regional links reserved. Especially on the Napoleonic heritage goes back a long time unchallenged leadership of the French road system. In international comparison, France had until well into the 20th century on by far the best maintained and clearly marked road network.
- N 1: Paris -Calais
- N 2: Paris - Maubeuge ( Breda -Antwerp -Amsterdam -Utrecht )
- N 3: Paris Charleville- Givet ( - Liege - Wesel- Hamburg)
- N 4: Paris Epernay -Metz ( Saarbrücken -Mainz )
- N 5: ( Paris ) Châlons -Strasbourg
- N 6: Paris (Lausanne -Simplon - Milan-Rome - Naples)
- N 7: Paris - Chambery -Mont Cenis (Turin -Milan )
- N 8: Paris - Nice - Antibes ( Genoa -Florence- Rome)
- N 9: ( Paris ) Aix -en- Provence -Toulon
- N 10: ( Paris ) Moulins -Perpignan
- N 11: Paris - Vendôme -Tours -Bordeaux -Bayonne
- N 12: ( Paris ) Courtellemont at Poitiers -Rochefort
- N 13: Paris - Rennes- Brest
- N 14: Paris - Evreux - Cherbourg.
Renamed during the Restoration
During the restoration of the imperial roads were renamed King roads ( routes royales ) and adapted in their route to the changed political circumstances. The Route 3, which led from Paris to Soissons, Reims and Liege to Hamburg, was renamed in 31 or 51, and all national roads with a higher number were downgraded to a number. Because the Routes 19 and 20 completely were outside the French territory, the roads Nos. 21 to 27 were henceforth referred to as No. 18 to 24. Since 1830, the French main roads are called routes nationales. The network included here are numbered 1 to 200 and was expanded after connecting the County of Nice and Savoy to 212.
Expansion and compression
In 1933, the road network were highly compressed, very many departmental roads and local roads with a total length of about 40,000 kilometers were classified to national roads. The number range used covered the road numbers from 301 to 853 in 1949, a further reform, in many large carriers have been formed. This mainly concerned the 1824 set national roads (eg the N 4 of Chalons-en -Champagne was made to Paris extended). Here, some of the new 1933 road numbers used were completely gone (eg, N 304, which has been fully integrated into the N 4). By 1972, however, three other national roads were added so that the highest street number then was 856. Furthermore, it was started to use the numbers from the 213-300 gap for bypass roads of cities, if not just an urban traversing national road has been placed on them.
Declassification and regionalization
Because of a 1972 law adopted numerous national roads ( 53,000 km) were converted into roads department. The French decentralization law of 13 August 2004 allows the department to take over the existing national roads, with the exception of national roads that are listed in the Official Gazette of December 6, 2005 as a road of national importance.
Since 2007, very extensive renumber the streets in France are carried out. Therefore, at present to expect that old and new names mixed occur. A route national (N) may well be downgraded to a route Departmental (D ) and will no longer be displayed in red but yellow.