Spanish experiences

[csd]

Folks,

I'm laid up here in the hotel in Barcelona with a bout of Traveller's Tummy, so I thought I might as well share my experience of Spanish roads with you all!

Spain is in the middle of renumbering its road system. Toll motorways are being changed from A-xx to AP-xx, and A-xx is being used for sections of old N-xx routes that have been upgraded to motorway standard. Below the N-xx tier, there are a multitude of local numbering systems, which appear to change as you move between provinces. Quite confusing.

The APs (autopistas) are heavily tolled and, at least in northern Spain, are mostly empty. It means you can make great progress, and most of the locals seem to hurtle along at at least 150 km/h, a 120 limit notwithstanding. Signage is good, using one of the FWHA series fonts on a blue background, and on some desert sections you could almost believe you were on the I-10 in Arizona (but for the blue backgrounds). The nasty Helvetica-style font is encroaching to a certain extent, though.

Traffic on A routes (upgraded National routes) is heavier, especially around the large cities. Signage is the same as on the autopistas, but the road surface isn't quite as good as the excellent standard on the tolled roads.

I've uploaded some pics to the International section.

/csd

[rusty]

Spain's numbering is very peculiar: I read some stuff on CBRD a while back and started investigating the new AP numbering. On the Spanish version of the DoT's site, I found the details. The 'P' in AP stands for peaje - they're using it for all the tolled roads. But you're right to say that the remaining A roads are mainly the upgraded national routes. Most of them were opened with N numbers, which was really just as confusing.

The other thing I noticed is that there's a policy that, for urban motorways, they now use a letter representing the name of the city, e.g. M for Madrid, B for Barcelona. So we have motorways numbered M-40 etc - you could almost be in Oxford!

I'm sure you know all that already. But I did find out about the regional road numbering a few years back, when I managed to track down a copy of the Spanish highway code. There are three classes of regional road, but they are denoted by the colour of the shield, not the prefix letter. Orange is for first class roads, green for second class, and a really hideously unreadable white on yellow for third class.

If you're driving North from Barcelona back through France, can I recommend the C-17 (ex C-1411)? You can cut back to Col d'Ares and thence to the French coast, and it's a great drive. Plus one of the most exciting road experiences of my life happened up there when upgrading works caused us to divert onto a temporary and now long-disappeared gravel surface. Great fun!

[J N Winkler]

The APs (autopistas) are heavily tolled and, at least in northern Spain, are mostly empty. It means you can make great progress, and most of the locals seem to hurtle along at at least 150 km/h, a 120 limit notwithstanding. Signage is good, using one of the FHWA series fonts on a blue background, and on some desert sections you could almost believe you were on the I-10 in Arizona (but for the blue backgrounds). The nasty Helvetica-style font is encroaching to a certain extent, though.

The typeface used on Spanish autopista and autovía signs which looks like F.H.W.A. Series E Modified is called "Autopista." It is not quite the same as E Modified, but the differences are really subtle--the upper in d and the descender in p are truncated differently, for example.

The other typeface used on Spanish signs, which looks like Transport Heavy, is called "Carretera Convencional." (In the U.S.A., roads which are not freeways or expressways are called "conventional roads," and given that this typeface is used on roads which do not have access control, its name looks like another borrowing from America.) I think its weight is even heavier than Transport Heavy and it has also been modified so that capital letters are 4/3 as high as the lowercase loop height. Series E Modified and, thus, Autopista have the same capital letter/lowercase loop height ratio.

This ratio is convenient because of Spanish sign designers' habit of using smaller type for less important bits of legend. For instance, the town name "Cangas de Onis" is often rendered on signs as "Cangas" at the basic height (altura basica) followed by "de Onis" at 3/4 that height.

I think Autopista dates from the 1992 signing reform, and I know Carretera Convencional does. Prior to that, Spain appears to have used straight Series E Modified on autopista and autovía signs (autopistas were signed in white on blue, as now, while autovías were signed in black on white), and the old French L1-L4 typefaces in black against white for conventional roads. (This, at least, is what I have been able to gather from the 1986 traffic signing catalogue--which is available for public inspection at the Nuevos Ministerios in Madrid--but, unfortunately, much of it is not pattern-accurate.)

[rusty]

Just remembered something else about Spanish signs: on the N-II just north of Madrid, there used to be a whole section of autovia with blue-on-white signs, instead of white-on-blue. I don't know if they were ever legal but they certainly looked strange. Spain is not good at being consistent!

[J N Winkler]

Just remembered something else about Spanish signs: on the N-II just north of Madrid, there used to be a whole section of autovia with blue-on-white signs, instead of white-on-blue. I don't know if they were ever legal but they certainly looked strange. Spain is not good at being consistent!

I have seen and photographed isolated examples of white-background signs with blue Series E Modified lettering. Last I checked, in December 2003, one of these (a diagrammatic) was still hanging on for dear life at the roundabout just before the Tagus River bridge between Toledo railway station and the old town. I think one was also used just north of the Nuevos Ministerios building. When I get time, I will go through these old pictures and put some of them online.

I certainly agree--consistency is not very good--and this is without even getting into the whole question of gray, pink, green, and yellow patches on blue-background signs.

[rusty]

J N Winkler said:

I certainly agree--consistency is not very good--and this is without even getting into the whole question of gray, pink, green, and yellow patches on blue-background signs.

What are all those colours for? I'm intrigued.[/quote]

[J N Winkler]

What are all those colours for? I'm intrigued.

Sorry to take so long to answer. Basically, the informal system calls for certain destinations to be patched on blue-background autopista/autovía signs in the colors against which they would appear on urban wayfinding signs (señales de uso específico en poblado). In brief, the background colors are as follows:

* Green--local destinations

* Gray--industrial estates

* Yellow--transport terminals (airports, railway stations, etc.)

* Pink--sites of historical or cultural interest

* White--sports facilities

Since pictures are worth thousands of words, I have furnished two examples taken from the sign designs for the A-1 autopista extension currently being built near Vitoria (N-240 interchange to Arlabán tunnel). I apologize in advance for the color rendition--there appears to be no way to get Acrobat to spit out the *.PNG files with CMYK as opposed to RGB colors, so the greens emerge as the basis color, which contrasts poorly with white.



This sign has a bilingual Basque/Castilian Spanish patch for an industrial estate near Alava.



This sign has two color patches: one in yellow for the aireportua (airport), which is shown in Basque only presumably because it does not have scheduled passenger services, and the other in green for Lakua, which is a small village near the A-1/N-240 interchange just north of Vitoria.

When I visited the Ministerio de Fomento to look at proyectos de construcción in November 2003, I found at least one example of pink patching on blue-background signs. However, I do not think I took a digital camera picture of it. Nowadays it is not uncommon for designers to use white-on-brown tourist signing instead for such attractions (the pink wayfinding signs apparently take over off the motorway) and, indeed, this is now the officially endorsed approach. Often a special logo is used for well-known attractions. The Ministerio now has a manual out on tourist signing, and I saw signs to the recommended designs in some proyectos as well.

[rusty]

Thanks for that - interesting stuff. Might be heading over to Spain this year so I'll have to look out for examples.

[CJ]

The APs (autopistas) are heavily tolled

How heavily, exactly? I'm thinking of driving the east coast from Barcelona to Alicante, a route of about 300 miles mostly tolled, how much are the tolls likely to come to?

I'm hoping not the 14 pence per mile that the M6 Toll costs!

[csd]

The APs (autopistas) are heavily tolled

How heavily, exactly? I'm thinking of driving the east coast from Barcelona to Alicante, a route of about 300 miles mostly tolled, how much are the tolls likely to come to?

I'm hoping not the 14 pence per mile that the M6 Toll costs!

Enter your journey into the ViaMichelin journey planner and you'll see the costs of fuel and tolls. http://www.viamichelin.com.

/csd

[nowster]

Enter your journey into the ViaMichelin journey planner and you'll see the costs of fuel and tolls. http://www.viamichelin.com.

All I see on that site is a large OK if I leave the trailing full stop on the URL. Take the full stop off, and it works.

[CJ]

Interesting, thanks... tolls seem to come to about 40 EUR.

What sort of standard are the non-toll roads that go through villages and towns? As congested as British ones, or would you not expect so many delays?

[csd]

Interesting, thanks... tolls seem to come to about 40 EUR.

What sort of standard are the non-toll roads that go through villages and towns? As congested as British ones, or would you not expect so many delays?

Sorry, can't help you there. In the interests of making time, I made sure that I either stuck to motorways (tolled) or "dual carriageways with motorway characteristics" (not tolled). I didn't venture onto the older N routes that meander through towns. If they're anything like the "SS" roads in Italy then they're dreadful!

Top marks to Michelin for including the "dual carriageway with motorway characteristics" category on their maps. Many roads shown as dual on other maps can be clogged by roundabouts, traffic lights, and bus stops. It's nice to know the difference.

/csd

[Michael]

Interesting, thanks... tolls seem to come to about 40 EUR.

What sort of standard are the non-toll roads that go through villages and towns? As congested as British ones, or would you not expect so many delays?

Generally speaking, the older Spanish Autopista's have terrible non-toll alternatives - the N-IV from Seville to Cadiz is considerably worse than the A4, as is the N-I from Burgos to south west of Vitoria. I'd be inclined to believe that the N-routes aren't likely to be great near Barcelona, but they may pick up further south.

I'd be inclined to suggest that you take the tolled alternative when bypassing cities, and investigate the non-toll routes when travelling between cities. If the non-toll alternatives are D2, then it's no problem - but I strongly, strongly recommend avoiding S2 non-toll alternatives, simply because of the amount of lorries that you're bound to get stuck behind.

[rusty]

What sort of standard are the non-toll roads that go through villages and towns? As congested as British ones, or would you not expect so many delays?

OK, last time I drove that bit of the N-340 was about 10 years ago, but unless there have been a lot of improvements it's abysmal. All the trucks used to use it instead of the autopista and although a lot was grade-separated, it was still mostly S2 so overtaking was next to impossible considering the traffic levels.

If you're going in summer then I'd avoid it like the plague and cough up the cash for the tolls!

The old main roads in Spain are generally wide, straight S2s designed for low traffic levels. It's off-topic but there are some lovely emotive shots of trucks driving down them in the film Jamon Jamon, which I thoroughly recommend (particularly for the tag line which IIRC was something like "where women are women and men eat ham").

[c2R]

What sort of standard are the non-toll roads that go through villages and towns? As congested as British ones, or would you not expect so many delays?

The N-II from the border to Barcelona is slow, but it moves.... generally S2 with left turn lanes in the middle, or swan necks. Instead of roundabouts with major roads, it tends to have grade separated junctions.

However, you'll find that it is plagued by truckers avoiding the tolls, so speeds are around the 60-80kmh mark generally in a constant stream of traffic.

There also doesn't seem to be any planning law as to what you can and can't build next to the road - so generally there's all sorts of shops and restuarnats and things, all with dubious entrances/exits onto the main road, and all looking very run-down and seedy now because the tourists generally keep to the motorway - old lay-bys and things along the route turned into a convenient hang out for prostitutes, even in the daytimes.

A tip though if you do go down to Spain via the med coast - don't drive through Le Perthus, even if you avoid the tolls the rest of the way! It's a town nestled in the pyrenees, that is a mecca for French people buying cheap tobacco - so a lack of parking coupled with, no free bypass (all the traffic travels along the main shopping street - joy, and border controls at each side of the town) make this a blackspot to be avoided.

By contrast the motorway is empty (well, at least until you get to Barcelona), but it is the most spectactularly dull stretch I have ever driven on, with large unwelcoming signs at laybys warning you not to stay long at them and beware of being robbed.

Nice.

[Michael]

(all the traffic travels along the main shopping street - joy, and border controls at each side of the town) make this a blackspot to be avoided.

Are the border controls not completely abandoned these days? I crossed on the motorway at Le Perthus a few years ago and never saw anyone at all - the entire complex appeared to be pretty much empty, anyway.

[c2R]

(all the traffic travels along the main shopping street - joy, and border controls at each side of the town) make this a blackspot to be avoided.

Are the border controls not completely abandoned these days? I crossed on the motorway at Le Perthus a few years ago and never saw anyone at all - the entire complex appeared to be pretty much empty, anyway.

Depends which Schengen countries you travel between - France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany tend to have zero frontier posts anymore, let alone people actually in them - Italy and Spain do retain the posts, and tend to have people around, though as you say a lot of the time the borders are shut up completely, or people just wave you through. There does seem to be alot of customs activity around the old road over Le Perthus though, which is perhaps because of the cheaper cigarettes in Spain, I'm not sure.

I've even crossed the Pyrenees on the St Laurent/Darnius pass route - and that can be interesting - there is no formal control post anymore, but occasionally the customs are there waiting half way down the hill. One one occasion they must have been waiting for someone, because at Darnius itself, there were several rather beefy looking Spanish Customs people in a line along the road, the first armed with a handgun to direct traffic, the second with a shotgun, the third with a large industrial spike strip, and the final one with what looked to be an automatic weapon.

Needless to say, we stopped......

[coasterjunkie]

A tip though if you do go down to Spain via the med coast - don't drive through Le Perthus, even if you avoid the tolls the rest of the way! It's a town nestled in the pyrenees, that is a mecca for French people buying cheap tobacco - so a lack of parking coupled with, no free bypass (all the traffic travels along the main shopping street - joy, and border controls at each side of the town) make this a blackspot to be avoided.

We went from France into Spain using the N9/N-II route through here without any probems a few years back. Upon using the motorway on the return leg a couple of weeks later however, we could see a line of traffic snaking for miles below us. We must have gotten lucky as Le Perthus obviously does get very congested.

Andy