Rodovia dos Imigrantes
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Rodovia dos Imigrantes (official designation SP-160) is a highway in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.
The highway connects the city of São Paulo to the Atlantic coast and with the seaside cities of São Vicente and Praia Grande. It follows the route 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 its 58.5 km stretch. 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 cross its near 60 km run, separating the city of São Paulo from the sea.
Rodovia dos Imigrantes was inaugurated in 1974, due to traffic saturation on Rodovia Anchieta. Although longer than Anchieta, Rodovia dos Imigrantes is nowadays busier than it, due to its building standards, which permit higher speeds limits and a more direct path to the cities of Santos and Guarujá, the northern coast (with Bertioga), as well as the southern coast (with cities Praia Grande, Mongaguá and Itanhaém.
Meaning "Immigrants Highway" in Portuguese, the name was given as a way to remember the contribution of immigrants to the cultural, economic, and social development of 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.
