NO STOP GARDEN
100,000 KM MEDIAN STRIP
Europe's motorway network is the result of over seventy years of political coordination and engineering ambition. In the aftermath of the Second World War, reconstruction accelerated the development of modern high-speed roads to promote economic integration, drawing inspiration from Italy's Autostrade and Germany's Reichsautobahn. In the 1950s, the UNECE formalized the E-Road Network – a unified numbering system for international routes that today spans over 100,000 km. Building this vast infrastructure required an estimated 1.3 gigatons of asphalt, forming an unbroken ribbon of sealed surfaces across the continent.
Read more
Location
Year
Support
highway network
2025
dr. michael nobis, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL