Are there any bannered routes outside the US?

[roadman65]

Are we the only nation in the world with Business, Bypass, Alternate, Truck, etc....?

[TEG24601]

Are we the only nation in the world with Business, Bypass, Alternate, Truck, etc....?

I have seen "Truck" routes in BC.  But they also have this habit of when a highway is replaced by a new route, the old route keeps the same number, then gets an A added (ex. 99A, 1A, 7A), and in some cases there are also B and C routes (97A, 97B, and 97C).


And in the UK, there is the M6 Toll, which an entire different route from the M6.

[deathtopumpkins]

Australia's old National Route system included bannered alternate routes. The National Routes have largely been phased out these days as part of the transition to alphanumeric numbering, but some states still use them.

Victoria still has at least one signed alternate route of Route 1, following Princes Hwy in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne parallel to the newer M1 motorway:
https://goo.gl/maps/G9EujggENdQg6zQ6A
https://goo.gl/maps/K39PAX9gxtEV3qpDA

Western Australia, which is the last holdout resisting converting to alphanumeric, also includes an alternate to National Route 94:
https://goo.gl/maps/c6HBdJdciPW84VePA

Victoria's state highway system also had some signed alternate routes that disappeared with the alphanumeric transition.

Western Australia's state highway system still includes at least one signed alternate route, although it is signed with National Route rather than state route shields for some reason, e.g.:
https://goo.gl/maps/TbUyp9KYrUgx3TAz7

[hotdogPi]

Mexico has an entire system of [number]D.

[Mapmikey]

British Columbia has at least 1 business-bypass set-up, in Chase:

https://goo.gl/maps/jbMfSbd1K4CUKy8k9

[SkyPesos]

If we're counting suffixed routes (like what I see in this thread already), China had some of them on their national expressway system before a mass renumbering to eliminate duplicate auxiliary routes back in (I think) 2018. An example is G15W (now G1522), through Suzhou, while the mainline G15 (or maybe it was G15E before the renumbering, I forgot) through Shanghai. Between those two routes, there was also a G15W2 (now G1521), passing in a small rural area between Suzhou and Shanghai.

[TheGrassGuy]

Taiwan.

[1995hoo]

The M6 Toll in England seems to fit the category even if the signs aren't "bannered" in the US sense (the word "Toll" is signed as part of the route number). It's essentially a bypass of an urban part of the M6 in Birmingham.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Italy uses a nice mess of suffixes. I've seen routes with three suffixes, like SS 106 bis dir A in Catanzaro, Calabria. France used to attach a letter to branch national routes, but they dropped that system in the 1st purge in 1973.

[vdeane]

The M6 Toll in England seems to fit the category even if the signs aren't "bannered" in the US sense (the word "Toll" is signed as part of the route number). It's essentially a bypass of an urban part of the M6 in Birmingham.

That sounds similar to how MUTCD compliant signage works, so I'm not sure I'd count that as bannered.

[GenExpwy]

The M6 Toll in England seems to fit the category even if the signs aren't "bannered" in the US sense (the word "Toll" is signed as part of the route number). It's essentially a bypass of an urban part of the M6 in Birmingham.

That sounds similar to how MUTCD compliant signage works, so I'm not sure I'd count that as bannered.

No, because M6 Toll is a separate road from M6.
Analogy: if FL 417 was designated "I-4 Toll"  while I-4 remained in use through downtown Orlando.

[1995hoo]

The M6 Toll in England seems to fit the category even if the signs aren't "bannered" in the US sense (the word "Toll" is signed as part of the route number). It's essentially a bypass of an urban part of the M6 in Birmingham.

That sounds similar to how MUTCD compliant signage works, so I'm not sure I'd count that as bannered.

No, because M6 Toll is a separate road from M6.
Analogy: if FL 417 was designated "I-4 Toll"  while I-4 remained in use through downtown Orlando.

On the other hand, suppose I-4 through Orlando were a US Route (let's just say "US-X" for convenience because if I use a number, someone will complain) and they signed FL-417 as "US-X Bypass." We'd say that's a bannered route. I don't see any real difference, other than utter pedantry, if they called it "US-X Toll" instead.

[jaehak]

Vietnam has them. The QL1A is the main north-south more or less coastal highway and is largely free, and largely expressway. The CT01 is a bannered version of it, I think. It's a tolled freeway that is currently discontiguous but will eventually parallel the QL1A. I've also seen the QL1C, a spur off the main road into the city of Nha Trang, and a QL1 that acts kinda like a business loop of the QL1A.

[zzcarp]

Until the downloads in the 1990s, Sault Ste Marie, Ontario had a bannered "Bridge" highway 17B which connected the north and east legs of mainline Highway 17B and the International Bridge.

[english si]

Vietnam has them. The QL1A is the main north-south more or less coastal highway and is largely free, and largely expressway. The CT01 is a bannered version of it, I think. It's a tolled freeway that is currently discontiguous but will eventually parallel the QL1A.

I don't think it's a bannered version of it. That's like saying that I-41 is a bannered version of US41. Or that countries like Poland and Ireland and some states of Australia where prefixes refer to importance/standard/legal rules and the number stays the same are bannered routes - ie that the [M6] in Ireland is bannered [N6]; [A2] and [S2] in Poland are bannered [2]; [M1] and [B1] in South Australia are bannered [A1].

----

Arguably the Ax(M) roads of the UK are bannered roads. But like "M6 Toll" they are more a bespoke formatted road number, rather than a banner. Italy is, AFAICS, the only European country to have embraced the banner rather than lettered suffixes or using similar numbers for related routes. You get the occasional 'bis' in France, but that's about it other than the examples already given.

[J N Winkler]

I would argue that bannering (in some form) is actually more prevalent in Europe than this discussion would suggest.

*  In Spain, letter suffixes are often used for bypassed segments of highway that function as business routes, e.g. the N-340a in the urbanizaciones east of Málaga (bypassed by the N-340, itself largely replaced by the A-7 for through traffic).  Near Benidorm, the N-332a has been bypassed by the present N-332, which is a vía rápida and by design, if not classification, a semi-motorway (two-lane road with full control of access).

*  In Germany, the relocation of the B6 through Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt was referred to as B6n ("B6 neu" or "new B6") until it was converted from a gelbe Autobahn to the A36.  The n suffix appears reasonably frequently in tender advertisements for relocation projects, though I don't recall offhand whether it is explicitly signed (possibly as cartouche plus neu; I don't think I've seen n in the cartouche itself).

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Heck. I've even driven a road suffixed b, i.e. a road that was bypassed, then both roads were bypassed again! (N-330b in Candanchu near the French border, which was the original route of N-330; in the 90s a bypass was built that became N-330 and the old road N-330a, then both roads were bypassed in 2003 by the Somport Tunnel, the Spanish section of which is now part of N-330 with the old roads now being N-330a and N-330b respectively)