This repository contains the datasets created for the visualisation published here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/commissions/european-motorways-1920-2020/.
"The Evolution of European Motorways 1920–2020" has been commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and has been developed as part of the exhibition "Cars: Accelerating the Modern World" (23 November 2019—19 April 2020), curated by Brendan Cormier. It shows the history and growth of motorways across Europe over a period of a hundred years, and it provides additional information on the political, economical and cultural context of their development.
While initially collected from the sources listed below, a lot of work has been put into the analysis, integration, and refinement of the transportation network data used in the visualisation and shared here.
The new and updated datasets are made available here.
- European Motorways. This dataset is the main component of the visualisation, and it's the one on which the biggest effort has been put into in order to render it clean, lightweight and consistent. The original vector files from OpenStreetMap have been simplified and consolidated, while the construction dates for each motorway's segment have been added to the dataset. This chronological infromation has been researched from a wide spectrum of online sources.
Each motorway is presented as a single-line feature with the following attributes:
int_ref: International reference number
ref: National reference number
country: ISO ALPHA-3 country code
start_year: year of start of construction (0 when unknown)
end_year: year of end of construction
length: length in arc degrees
Here is an example of the attributes' table:
| int_ref | ref | country | start_year | end_year | length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E 451 | A 51 | DEU | 1933 | 1935 | 440392 |
The complete dataset can be downloaded from here. The CRS is EPSG:4326.
-
Pan-European Transport Corridors. The corridors' axes have been georeferenced and traced in QGIS, and organised into individual shapefiles. The complete dataset can be downloaded from here. The CRS is EPSG:3857.
-
Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). The network's paths have been georeferenced and traced in QGIS. The complete dataset can be downloaded from here. The CRS is EPSG:3857.
You can re-use this data for your purposes, while respecting the terms of use and conditions set by their initial creators. We would also be grateful if you could link back to this page. If you find any error in the data — or would like to update or suggest any edits — feel free to fork this repository or drop us a line at [email protected].
The sources of the reference data for the transportation network and the basemap used in the visualisation are listed below.
Elevation data
📦 Danielson, J.J., and Gesch, D.B., 2011, Global multi-resolution terrain elevation data 2010 (GMTED2010).
Historical borders
📦 Weidmann, Nils B., Doreen Kuse, and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch. "The Geography of the International System: The CShapes Dataset." International Interactions 36, no. 1 (2010).
Waterbodies, Cities
📦 Natural Earth
Motorways network (initial reference)
📦 OpenStreetMap Contributors
International E-roads Network
📦 Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) / Columbia University, and Information Technology Outreach Services (ITOS) / University of Georgia. 2013. Global Roads Open Access Data Set, Version 1 (gROADSv1). Palisades, NY: NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC).
Pan-European Transport Corridors (initial reference)
📦 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).
Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), initial reference
📦 European Commission, Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE).
📦 EuroGlobalMap 2019, © EuroGeographics.
The visualisation has been designed and developed by Studio Folder (Marco Ferrari, Elisa Pasqual, Letizia Bernardelli, Simone S. Melis, Mattia Salvà) and Angelo Semeraro. The historical research for the chronological sequence of the motorways construction has been completed by Brendan Cormier and Esme Hawes (Victoria and Albert Museum).