I ran several searches and couldn’t find any thread which explains the highway nomenclature in Taiwan. It’s confusing, as some of the numbers are reused for different levels of roads, and it seems some have more than one name in Chinese. For example, is the Sun Yatsen highway (#1) the same as 國道一號 Guo2dao4 #1 ? The Wiki article wasn’t helpful enough because it wasn’t bilingual; and although some of the Chinese terms are present on the separate pages for each road, such as the entry on National Highway No. 1 here, for example, which gives “National Highway No. 1 (Traditional Chinese: 中山高速公路”, I can’t figure out whether that is the same as 國道一號 Guo2dao4 #1. I don’t use the highways, as I’m on a bike, but would like to get an easy overview for the purposes of giving directions and adding English place labels to Wikimapia.
Is anyone up to the task of putting together a bilingual list, perhaps to then be made into a sticky?
Although the number of highway passengers declined 3.4 percent and cargo decreased 3.6 percent in 2002 from 2001, major highways in Taiwan were still often congested, especially on weekends and holidays. In 2002, there were 17.91 million motor vehicles in Taiwan.
Traffic on the north-south Sun Yat-sen Freeway 中山高速公路 has increased dramatically since its opening in 1978, especially on its northern section. Statistics show that the road handles more than 70 percent of the traffic between Keelung and Hsinchu. Thus, to alleviate some of this heavy traffic, the Second Northern Freeway 北部第二高速公路 was constructed, beginning in Keelung and connecting with the North-South Freeway near Taipei and Hsinchu. The 106-kilometer section between Hsinchu and Sijhih of this new 117-kilometer freeway was opened to traffic in 1997, and the entire line was completed in 1999. Other measures taken to lighten congestion on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway include the adding of an additional lane to each side of the heavily used 111-kilometer stretch from Hsinchu to Yuanlin, and the widening of the section in southern Taiwan between Yuanlin and Kaohsiung in 1997.
Construction of the Taipei-Yilan Freeway 北宜高速公路, which starts in Nangang with a tunnel to Yilan, commenced in July 1991 and is scheduled for completion in 2005. In addition, an elevated east-west expressway in Taipei was completed in June 1998.[/quote] Source
Acutally in the middle of the Wiki-Article (under “List of national highways”) you can find links to articles about each individual highway, and some include the Chinese names. Note the comments regarding the Chinese names of the #3 highway (which is sometimes called the 2nd highway).
Thanks, Rascal. What’s confusing is that the numbers aren’t completely unique, or so I seem to remember. For example, I think Bei3er4gao, aka the 2nd Northern Freeway, is not Highway 2 as the former name would seem to imply, but an extension of Highway 3, or something weird like that. Plus, I’m looking for information that specifically gives the “aka” info, because when someone tells you “the Zhong1shan1 Hwy”, if you don’t know that’s also called bla bla or bla bla, you get confused.
OK, highways are national roads … freeways are freeways, mostly 4 or 6 lane. you also have regional, county and local roads
The numbering is easy, even numbers run west-east, uneven run north-south …
Some numbers return indeed but they have a suffix according to difficulty, importance and size of the road … or something …
#3 freeway, is the second freeway to run from north to south #1 freeway was the first, and has been named SunYatsen freeway for years #2 is the connection from #3 over Taoyuan to the #1 and going on to the Taoyuan international Airport, it’s running from east to west. #4 connects the #3 and #1 just before Taichung. So, mostly the even freeways connect the uneven 1 and 3 freeways over and over … I suppose there are about 10 west-east connections over the whole lenght of the #1 and #3 freeways …
#3 highway is running from Taipei down to Kaoshiung, passing through a whole lot of cities, towns, villages, more or less inland, away from the coast. #1 highway is running from Taipei down to Kaoshiung following more or less the coastline.
So, basically you have a #1 freeway, assigned a flower symbol, and the #1 highway, assigned this rounded triangular symbol.
The most important thing to remember is either a number in a flower symbol (freeways) or the rounded tringle (highways, national roads)
See the last comment - freeway #3 is often named the 2ndfreeway (not Number 2freeway) because it’s the 2nd one running from North to South.
Odd for North-South, even numbers are for West-East freeways. 國道x號 is just the general name, where x represents any of the numbers below:
