Autovía

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about a type of Spanish highway. For the British car, see Autovia.

Sign for autovía in Spain

Autovía is one of two classes of major highway in the Spanish road system similar to a freeway. It is akin to the autopista, the other major highway class, but has fewer features and is not a toll road.

Distinguishing features:

must be divided by a median
must have restricted access
cannot be crossed by other roads

Whereas autopistas are laid out on original routes, autovías are generally improvements to existing roads, so they may have tighter curves and less safe access. However, both have speed limits of 120 km/h.

Rest areas are usually 300 km or 2 hours apart. There is usually a safety lane along the median.

Although generally state-owned and financed, there are some autovías which are actually built and mantained by private companies, such as Pamplona-Logroño A-12^[1]^[2] or Madrid access road M45.^[3] The company assumes the building costs and the Autonomous Community where they are located (in the given examples, Navarre and Madrid) pays a yearly per-vehicle fee to the company based upon usage statistics, called "toll in the shadow" (in Spanish, peaje en la sombra).^[4] The system can be regarded as a way for the Government to finance the build of new roads at the expense of the building company. Also, since the payment starts only after the road is finished, construction delays are usually shorter than those of regular state-owned freeways.

Autovía was also the name of a 2 car DMU train of the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México that operated between Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Mexico.

Autovías is the name of the first-class service of the Herradura de Plata Mexican bus company operating in the vicinity of the Mexican state of Michoacan.