Old Pre-1975 E-roads plotted

Apparently, the E-roads used to have completely different numbers from 1950 to 1975 before the system was redone in the style of Interstate, with some time before being ratified and implemented by individual countries. This system was closer to the Autobahn one in style or current EuroVelo, with roads being traced more naturally instead of trying to conform to a grid. However, there was never a map of the whole system, only a list of control cities. Until now. With peak autistic thesis procrastination, I present to you this KMZ:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k0gV3kc3mhs2cH8pkI8IacoMAx-pVJ8D/view?usp=drive_link

Rendered in English:

Rendered in Czech:

Excuse the blurriness and LOD misbehaving at prime meridian, but it makes the lines more visible, ipso facto.

 

To avoid confusion with modern post-1975 E-roads, I'll refer to the pre-1975 E-roads with the EH prefix, with H as in heritage or historic. The color is also brown instead of green. There is some value in signposting these in addition to modern E-roads, or backporting them as E2xxx or E9xxx (E001 to E099 is to be considered as E1001 to E1099).

The treaty mentions road categories with design speed up to 140 km/h. Note that there were no global rural speed limits before the oil crisis of 1973. The exteritorial motorway Breslau-Wien was even designed for 160 km/h. Nowadays with modern vehicles the comfortable cruise speed on a motorway is around 200 km/h, but the speed limits haven't reflected it yet. Unless you're driving a historic vehicle, you'll only fall asleep at 130 km/h, or the snail pace will make you grab your phone to substitute the utter lack of dopamine. Czechia is a bit like the Texas of Europe, and just like our relatively libertarian shall issue conceal carry, we also have some time travel stretches of motorways with 150 km/h (93 mph) speed limits, controlled dynamically with telematic systems. Only in Saudi Arabia (160 km/h) and Germany (suggested 130 km/h) can you drive faster.

The pre-1975 list on Wikipedia seems to be some sort of amended version compared to the OG 1950 one, but the actual source of that version is nowhere to be found. Some roads were adjusted, there are less disused exonyms, but still some typos and obscure designations. EH23 to EH26 and EH93 to EH99 and EH101 to EH103 have been added, and EH76 removed as it duplicates a part of modified EH75.

Originally the EH12 was supposed to go to Leningrad AND Moscow, but Wikipedia says just Moscow. If Leningrad is before Moscow, EH12 is a lot like E67 Via Baltica, which is a diagonal gap fill, so it only begins at E65, but ends past E85. These diagonal corridors got a huge downgrade in 1975.

I took the liberty of merging EH21a and EH21b into EH21, as the tunnel under Mont Blanc has likely not been built by 1950.

The network was clearly conceived to have fixed links one day, that's why there are no EH roads on Ireland (only EH35 to Holyhead port), Corsica, Sicily, Crete, or Cyprus. The English Channel was seen as worthy of 4 tunnels. Looking at the Dutch who were building Flevopolder back then, making some polders in the English Channel didn't seem far-fetched. Depth-wise though, restoring the Doggerland would be easier, and archaeologists would have a field day there. Now that we already have 1 rail-only Channel tunnel and the UK has brexitted, more don't seem likely. As for Denmark, a bridge between Helsingør and Helsingborg on EH4 (now E4/E47) was seen as more likely to be built before Øresundsbron on EH66 (now E20), but still hasn't despite being way shorter. Other unbuilt fixed links are Rostock-Gedser on EH64 (now notorious E55) and Frederikshavn-Gothenburg on EH3 (now E45), as well as Sassnitz-Trelleborg on EH6 (now E6/E251, also poor Bornholm). The Fehmarn-Rødbyhavn fixed link on EH4 (now just E47) is being completed, but the imagery is from 2022 on German side and 2024 on Danish side, so not much progress is seen. As for Sicily, the bridge over the Strait of Messina is supposed to have started construction by now, but will likely be cancelled again by the next government.

Speaking of modern E55 laden with mostly vanilla brothels, I really think someone should build a fetish club in Fetisovo on E121 (also AH 70). Call it something like FetishOwO. Seems to have been renamed to Kendirli, though. There is some kind of beach resort, possibly with a nudist (FKK) section.

I also stretched the endings at borders to the next plausible city, and those into the USSR a bit further. There's EH22 Berlin to Lemberg I've extended to Stalingrad. Germans haven't gotten any further back then.

There is a brief note about separated cycle and pedestrian paths in the 1950 treaty. So maybe it could also serve like a prototype of EuroVelo and E-paths, but with more pragmatic transport in mind as was common back then when automobiles were not that common, than mostly recreation on scenic routes. Current EuroVelo heavily follows bodies of water for obtaining a favorable terrain, and current E-paths are based on old pilgrimage routes. The grand synthesis of individual transport is to slap a motor on a bicycle to get a motorcycle. These go way faster than all these annoying trucks, fake trucks, and semi-trucks, and also like tight curves, so a motorway designed for a TEU moving at 120 km/h feels like it's meant to be ridden at 200 km/h on an average chopper.

Overall, the network seems to specifically exclude the USSR, which had its own road numbering system spanning over vast swaths of land, despite being signatories to the treaty, including Belarussian and Ukrainian SSRs. The west of France is noticeably sparse, in addititon to the aforementioned Balkan issues. There are also Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Iceland on the signatory board of the OG 1950 treaty, which don't have any E-roads even today. Iceland's road 1 could well be considered E0. The Middle Eastern countries have made their own Mashreq highway network instead, although Israel didn't ratify it (the other countries think there should be Palestine instead of Israel). Egypt also has Trans-African Highways 1 and 4. Turkey later overlaid the Asian Highway network, and Asian post-Soviet countries opted for both Asian Highways and the later modern E-road extension. Both systems have gaps in Siberia, which is becoming more and more habitable due to oncoming interglacial maximum. E10xx in the Stans don't seem to mind gravel occasionally, so the rest of E1xxx to go there shouldn't mind some mud either.

I also have gotten a bit carried away with the Iron Curtain, and extended it all the way around the Lands of the Socialist Camp or how it was called back then. The reference time period is the 1960s. West Berlin blob isn't included to reduce clutter. Iran is outside, because before 1979 it was still a fairly westernized monarchy, as in women didn't have to participate in these facecloth fetishes and Gor'an maledom dynamics. Afghanistan is outside because it was invaded by Soviets in 1979, not long after being decolonized by the British, who are famously bad at drawing international borders. India is outside because the skirmishes with USA-backed Pakistan that led India to side with USSR have just begun. Laos is inside because North Vietnam used it for logistics. Cambodia is outside because the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot took full control in 1975 (after a pro-US junta which overthrew Sihanouk in 1970 was abandoned after a bad Congress vote, and before being occupied by properly pro-Soviet Vietnam in 1978), and before them, Sihanouk was officially neutral, despite being quite sympathetic to communists. Vietnam is split around 17th parallel, because the war was only beginning. South China sea is not entirely inside, because Mainland China was too busy managing the Great Leap Forward to exercise the 9 dash line claim (or to even think about invading Vietnam and fail just like the USA before). Macao and Hong Kong were firmly Portugese and British. The Korean War has stabilized in 1953, so the line follows the current DMZ. Ne Win's junta in Burma was like Hoxha's Albania, so it's inside. Outer Mongolia was a Soviet satellite state created as a buffer zone with Mainland China. The government on Taiwan has not yet formally rescinded the claim. Note that the Soviet Union was concerned about Mainland China becoming the dominant socialist power. There were also some Soviet-leaning freshly decolonized African countries, but this is getting too much off tangent.

I could add labels on the lines like I did in the Extra Eastern European E-roads Envisioning article to make it easier to follow, but there are too many stretches and the clutter from all the numbers would likely make it worse.

ALSO FUCK NVIDIA ONCE MORE BECAUSE THEIR SHITTY LINUX DRIVER CRASHES GOOGLE EARTH WITH SIGABRT OUT OF NOWHERE EVEN WITH SAFE MODE, SO I HAD TO MAKE THIS ON MY WINDOWS NOTEBOOK.

 

Updated fixed English version, but the LODs are misbehaving:

The Wikipedia list drops some control cities listed in the 1950 treaty, which caused the lines to not really link up. I found some extra roads and extensions in a road map of Balkan peninsula published in Czechoslovakia in 1969. These are EH94 beyond Zagreb, EH15 beyond Budapest (chose the Braşov branch instead of Sibiu to show more EH94), EH104 and EH105 in Turkey, and the absence of any EH85 in there, so therefore I have extrapolated it like E50. There were also some unofficial western extensions to EH23 and EH24 on a slightly scammy outdated reprints of a map of Turkey, one of them from 1993 (if the thing that looks like a date is to be believed) bought in 2008 as a souvenir of sorts (only 15 years out of date), with EH24 starting off exactly like E104. There were numbers from both pre-1975 and post-1975 systems.

It turns out the most eager to adopt the E-roads were Norway (got E6 exception), Sweden (got E4 exception), Belgium (as if an EU federal district), and Eastern Bloc with some Balkan delays. Other countries kept to national numbering and treated E-roads as corridors for subsidies. Anarchocapitalistically speaking, the pimps of the brothels on the infamous E55 could finance upgrades to 8-lane motorways, if only the state didn't persecute consensual human trafficking, especially by nonconsensual human trafficking, which makes it a switch, and is not how to punish disobedient subizens. But then, I'm more of the kind of person that would ride an E-path for hiking on a dirt bike, and instead of expensive brothels would selfbondage to a random tree. Which sort of begs the question, why do people keep buying vehicles that depend on a well-maintained paved road? Where is the freedom in having to move by these railings? The few good and handy stretches of roads then become congested by the increasing number of those who cannot take the shortcut. What moves on fixed railings? Trains. Again. Take this or the current E-road chart and repurpose it for a high-speed rail.