The A79 autoroute (''La Bourbonnaise'') is a motorway in central

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. Opened in November 2022, it connects the

A71 autoroute The A71 autoroute is a motorway in central France. It is also called ''l'Arverne''. It starts at Orléans and ends at Clermont-Ferrand. Orléans to Bourges The autoroute is 2x2 lanes and is operated by the Société Cofiroute (Orléans-Bourg ...

near Sazeret with Moulins and

Digoin Digoin () is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France. The junction of the '' Canal du Centre'' and the '' Canal latéral à la Loire'' is near Digoin. Geography The river Bourbinc ...

.The A79 motorway
Autoroute de Liaison Atlantique Europe. Retrieved 10 January 2023. It is being extended to the A6 autoroute near

Mâcon Mâcon (), historically anglicised as Mascon, is a city in east-central France. It is the prefecture of the department of Saône-et-Loire in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. Mâcon is home to near 34,000 residents, who are referred to in French as M� ...

, which is expected to be completed in 2023. The A79 is an upgrade of the

Route nationale 79 Route nationale 79, or RN 79, is a French national road connecting Montmarault to Mâcon. Totalling 167 kilometers long, it is a section of the . RN79 passes through the mountain pass Col du Bois Clair near Sologny. It is being upgraded to mot ...

to motorway standards. A79 was also the code for a projected motorway between the

A432 autoroute The A432 autoroute is a motorway in Lyon, France. It connects the A46 autoroute, A46 with the A42 autoroute, A42 and A43 autoroute, A43 serving the airport ''Lyon Saint-Exupéry''. With the northern segment of the A46 it allows the traffic Par ...

(

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of t ...

-Saint-Exupéry Airport) to A9 autoroute/

A61 autoroute The A61 autoroute is a French motorway forming part of the ''Autoroute de Deux Mers''. It is long. It connects Narbonne (and a junction on A9) and Toulouse, where it becomes the A62 towards Bordeaux. It also has junctions with the A64 towards ...

( Narbonne) via

Valence Valence or valency may refer to: Science * Valence (chemistry), a measure of an element's combining power with other atoms * Degree (graph theory), also called the valency of a vertex in graph theory * Valency (linguistics), aspect of verbs rel ...

, Aubenas and Alès. A public inquiry into "Transport in the Rhone Valley and Languedoc Coast" was held between 27 March and 26 July 2006. This new road would avoid the widening of the

A7 autoroute The A7 Autoroute, also known as l'autoroute du Soleil (English: the Motorway of the Sun) is a French motorway. It continues the A6 and links Lyon to Marseille. The autoroute du Soleil is long and forms part of European routes E15, E80, and ...

to 2×5 lanes between

and Orange and would offer a credible alternative for traffic to the Rhone Valley. It would serve a host of new communities in several departments (Ardèche, Haute Gard, Haute Vallée de Hérault) would be served: Privas, Aubenas, Alès, Le Vigan. The cost estimated in 2005 was 3.4 billion euros (as a comparison, the widening of the A7 and A9 would cost 1.5 billion euros).

References

A79 {{france-road-stub