Main street (general)
A main street (also known as main thoroughfare ) is generally used to describe a street with a high volume of traffic and an important connection function. The opposite of the main street is the side street , as it has less traffic and economic importance. The term encompasses both inner-city roads (main roads of a town or town and its other roads) as well as long-distance roads (main routes) or regional and local roads (side routes up to rural goods routes).
Germany
In Germany , main streets are privileged city streets with high traffic and economic importance. Main roads can take on the function of a federal , state , district or a municipal road . In addition, the term is also defined in the technical road construction guidelines. The RAS-N assigns a street category to the main road .
They have to meet certain structural criteria that go beyond the pure driving geometry of the other city streets. For example, the lane width on two-lane roads should generally be 6.50 meters, but it can be reduced to 5.50 meters in the case of light heavy goods vehicle traffic and bus traffic . In the case of heavy traffic , the width can also be increased to 7.00 meters. In the area of tight curve radii, the roadway must also be widened. To pedestrians to facilitate the crossing of the road, should traffic islands are arranged. For the design of main streets, the guidelines for the construction of city streets ( RASt for short ) are applied in Germany.
Roads outside of closed localities are in Germany not as the main roads, but by their easement designated as federal, state, county or municipal road.
In the GDR , the priority roads were called the main road.
Austria
In Austria there are two categories for main roads after the Sustainer, federal roads (maintenance by Asfinag of federal ) and state roads (maintenance by the countries). Federal roads are motorways and expressways ( federal highways A and S ), other high-level trunk roads are state
roads ( state roads B - "former federal highways " - and L ). There are also a few more important private roads , especially as alpine crossings. This categorization is independent of the local area , even in large cities a number of thoroughfares and access roads are state roads. All secondary roads are all municipal roads , especially through bypasses , many urban and village main roads are now in municipal maintenance. In rural areas, however, there are also many public rural freight routes as secondary roads that are maintained by neighboring communities.
In contrast to the other countries, however, in Vienna, which is the state and municipality, there is a hierarchy of local roads in main street B (which corresponds to state road B of the other countries) and main road A (corresponding to state road L).
The federal highways (including today's state highways B) developed from the main commercial roads defined in the whole monarchy by an imperial patent from 1726 .
The variety of the historic main streets of the cities ranges from the narrow medieval Linzer Gasse in Salzburg to the baroque boulevard of the Herrengasse in Graz to the modern boulevard of the Ringstraße , Kärntner Straße or Mariahilfer Straße in Vienna - the names Linzer Gasse and Kärntner Straße still show that here former function as the beginning of a trunk road. The main streets of the markets and villages have always been the ones that pass the local church .
Switzerland
See: main street and side street
