Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
A26 autoroute
Summary
The A26 is a long French motorway connecting Calais and Troyes. It is also known as the Autoroute des Anglais (Motorway of the English) as its length forms the first part of the main route from the Dover-Calais ferries and the Channel Tunnel towards Southern and Eastern France and the Cote d'Azur. The motorway is used by a high proportion of British cars, particularly during the summer holiday season. The A26 between Calais and Arras (in conjunction with the A1 autoroute) is part of one of the two main routes between London and Paris, the other being the A16.
The road forms part of European route E-15 and E-17. South of its junction with the A29 autoroute the A26 is part of the Grand contournement de Paris.
The A26 was conceived in the 1960s as an upgrade to the "Grand Itineraire" Calais-Vitry-le-François which followed mostly the N44.
The first part of the motorway opened in December 1976 with the 23 km section from junction 5 at Lilliers to the A21 exit at Lievin. Subsequently, the 261 km Calais-Reims stretch was opened in stages, the final one completed in March 1989.
By the time the 96 km southern extension connecting the A4 autoroute and A5 autoroute opened in June 1992 it was the final link in the first continuous motorway route from Calais to Marseille and the Cote d'Azur that completely bypassed the Paris area with its associated congestion, reducing driving time from Calais to Lyon by approximately 90 minutes to around 6 hours. This section also made up the final part of an uninterrupted motorway route between the major cities of Lyon/Marseille and Lille without having to drive via either Paris or Belgium.
The road in its current form was completed in 2010 with the short extension southward from the old A4 autoroute which ran through the centre of Reims (now marked A344) to the new A4 southern bypass of the city (Contournement de Reims Sud) along with the construction of the new closed system peage station at Ormes.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.