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Interesting stat in the article that Spain has orders of magnitude more motorways than UK or even Germany, while having a lower population. Any insight on why t

by dmode 8y ago

Interesting stat in the article that Spain has orders of magnitude more motorways than UK or even Germany, while having a lower population. Any insight on why that is the case ?

baybal2 8y ago
Food for thought: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4-XDxCb92X4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=4-XDxCb92X4
petre 8y ago
Access to EU funds when the EU was still young and everything was cool. They also have private motorways.
benj111 8y ago
The UKs last big road building splurge was in the 90s and hit major resistance from environmentalists etc. So that build out never really finished. Plus geographically the UK is quite concentrated down in the south east. So you don't need vast lengths of motorway to reach the extremities. I'm less knowledgeable about Spain, but I know they've had a massive building boom in the early 2000s, was it part of that? Plus you have populations on all 4 sides of the Iberian 'square', so you do have to build long roads to connect them all.
CydeWeys 8y ago
Huh? Spain definitely does not have orders of magnitude more motorways. It has only slightly more than Germany and France, and a little less than 4X more than the UK. A lot of this is explainable by differences in size; Spain also has over double the land area of the UK. And keep in mind that "motorway" is specifically referring to what we would call interstate highway spec in the US. There's plenty of high quality roads that don't meet this spec that nevertheless would get you where you need to go quickly. In the US we have state routes and similar, and the UK has their own thing.
wastedhours 8y ago
A lot of the narrative around it had Spain spending heavily on infrastructure before the 2008 crisis - with large proportion of that on roads. Judging by the quality and modernity of them all when I've been there, I'm tempted to believe it.

by dmode 8y ago

Interesting stat in the article that Spain has orders of magnitude more motorways than UK or even Germany, while having a lower population. Any insight on why that is the case ?

baybal2 8y ago

Food for thought: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4-XDxCb92X4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=4-XDxCb92X4

petre 8y ago

Access to EU funds when the EU was still young and everything was cool. They also have private motorways.

benj111 8y ago

The UKs last big road building splurge was in the 90s and hit major resistance from environmentalists etc. So that build out never really finished. Plus geographically the UK is quite concentrated down in the south east. So you don't need vast lengths of motorway to reach the extremities. I'm less knowledgeable about Spain, but I know they've had a massive building boom in the early 2000s, was it part of that? Plus you have populations on all 4 sides of the Iberian 'square', so you do have to build long roads to connect them all.

CydeWeys 8y ago

Huh? Spain definitely does not have orders of magnitude more motorways. It has only slightly more than Germany and France, and a little less than 4X more than the UK. A lot of this is explainable by differences in size; Spain also has over double the land area of the UK. And keep in mind that "motorway" is specifically referring to what we would call interstate highway spec in the US. There's plenty of high quality roads that don't meet this spec that nevertheless would get you where you need to go quickly. In the US we have state routes and similar, and the UK has their own thing.

wastedhours 8y ago

A lot of the narrative around it had Spain spending heavily on infrastructure before the 2008 crisis - with large proportion of that on roads. Judging by the quality and modernity of them all when I've been there, I'm tempted to believe it.