The A1 highway is a

highway A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It is used for major roads, but also includes other public roads and public tracks. In some areas of the United States, it is used as an equivalent term to controlled-acces ...

in Lithuania, connecting the three largest Lithuanian cities:

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...

, Kaunas, and

Klaipėda Klaipėda (; ; german: Memel; pl, Kłajpeda; russian: Клайпеда; sgs, Klaipieda) is a city in Lithuania on the Baltic Sea coast. The capital of the eponymous county, it is the third largest city and the only major seaport in Lithuania ...

. The highway is long, making it the longest highway route in Lithuania. Highway is indicated as motorway between municipal borders of Vilnius and Klaipėda. This excludes sections that crosses Vievis, Kaunas and Sujainiai (which has one-level junction that is used by agricultural vehicles at times). The highway has two carriageways with two lanes each for the entire section. This excludes section near Kaunas between junctions with A5 and A6 highways. It's now undergoing reconstruction where the road will be widened to have four carriageways with two lanes each with one short section with four lanes which is already refurbished. Two outer carriageways will be used for connecting densely located local junctions with speed limit of 90 km/h, while two inner carriageways will avoid connections with local junctions and the speed limit will be higher with 110 km/h. Inner carriageways will be connected via slip roads from outer carriageways. The main reason why the road is now under construction is that the section has highest

AADT Annual average daily traffic, abbreviated AADT, is a measure used primarily in transportation planning, transportation engineering and retail location selection. Traditionally, it is the total volume of vehicle traffic of a highway or road for a ...

in Lithuania of all roads outside urban areas. Before 2021, only section Kaunas-Klaipėda was considered to be a motorway while section Kaunas-Vilnius was considered to be an expressway from 2006. Kaunas-Vilnius had too many substandard features for receiving motorway status. Reconstruction took place in 2020 on which many minor elements of the highway were renovated to fulfil the standards for safe 130 km/h traffic. This includes reconstruction of lanes near junctions, reducing amount of some slipways, removing possibility of pedestrian crossing at grade, building pedestrian underpasses and overpasses. New motorway will remain not completely grade separated since there are some points where the highway can be accessed via right ins and outs whom doesn't form parts of grade-separated junctions. This is not usual for motorway in Europe, since most motorways here are accessed via grade separated junction. The highway follows

E85 E85 is an abbreviation typically referring to an ethanol fuel blend of 85% ethanol fuel and 15% gasoline or other hydrocarbon by volume. In the United States, the exact ratio of fuel ethanol to hydrocarbon may vary according to ASTM 5798 that ...

for its entire length with the relatively short section of E67 northwest of Kaunas also known as the Via Baltica. The Vilnius–Kaunas highway was completed in 1970 and Kaunas–Klaipėda was completed in 1987. It replaced the first 40 kilometers of the 1930s-built Samogitian Highway stretching from Kaunas.

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Roads in Lithuania European route E85 {{Europe-road-stub

See also

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