Rodovia dos Imigrantes
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Rodovia dos Imigrantes (official designation SP-160) is a highway in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.
It connects the city of São Paulo to the Atlantic Coast (the seaside cities of São Vicente and Praia Grande). It duplicates the itinerary of Rodovia Anchieta, and is also one of Brazil's busiest highways, particularly on weekends. It has 44 viaducts, 7 bridges and 11 tunnels, along 58,5 km. The highway has recently been expanded, in one of the most audacious feats of Brazilian highway engineering, with extremely long tunnels and high strutting six-lane bridges, seemingly floating over the tropical rain forest which covers the steep faces of the Serra do Mar, the 800 m high cliff range which separates the São Paulo plateau from the seaside lowlands. The view towards the coast is breathtaking. During sunny weekends, more than 1 million automobiles commonly crosses its ca. 60 km separating São Paulo city from the sea. Rodovia dos Imigrantes was inaugurated in 1974, due to saturation in Rodovia Anchieta. Although longer than Anchieta, is nowadays busier than it, due to its building standards, which permits higher speeds limits and a more direct path to Santos and Guarujá, the Northern coast (with Bertioga) and the Southern Coast (with cities Praia Grande, Mongaguá and Itanhaém.
Meaning "Immigrants Highway", the name was given as a form of remembering the immigrants' contribution to the cultural, economic and social impacts that they had in the country.
It is managed by a state concession to the private company Ecovias, which also maintains Rodovia Anchieta, and therefore is a toll road.
The two carriageways of Rodovia dos Imigrantes are both fully reversible. Traffic is managed to flow either bidirectionally (uphill on one carriageway and downhill on the other) or unidirectionally(uphill or downhill on both carriageways), depending on demand. In the unidirectional mode, the opposing traffic is diverted to Rodovia Anchieta.
