A26 autoroute
road in France
The A26 is a 357.6 km (222.2 mi) long French motorway connecting Calais and Troyes. It is also known as the Autoroute des Anglais (Motorway of the English) as its length forms the first part of the main route from the Dover-Calais ferries and the Channel Tunnel towards Southern and Eastern France and the Cote d'Azur. The motorway is used by a high proportion of British cars, particularly during the summer holiday season. The A26 between Calais and Arras (in conjunction with the A1 autoroute) is part of one of the two main routes between London and Paris, the other being the A16.
The road forms part of European route E-15 and E-17. South of its junction with the A29 autoroute the A26 is part of the Grand contournement de Paris.
History of the A26
The A26 was conceived in the 1960s as an upgrade to the "Grand Itineraire" Calais-Vitry-le-François which followed mostly the N44 road.
The first part of the motorway opened in December 1976 with the 23 km section from junction 5 at Lillers to the A21 exit at Lievin. Subsequently, the 261 km Calais-Reims stretch was opened in stages, the final one completed in March 1989.
By the time the 96 km southern extension connecting the A4 autoroute and A5 autoroute opened in June 1992 it was the final link in the first continuous motorway route from Calais to Marseille and the Cote d'Azur that completely bypassed the Paris area with its associated congestion, reducing driving time from Calais to Lyon by approximately 90 minutes to around 6 hours.
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This entry incorporates text from “A26 autoroute” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.