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The island of Ireland, comprising Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, has an extensive network of tens of thousands of kilometres of public roads, usually surfaced. These roads have been developed and modernised over centuries, from trackways suitable only for walkers and horses, to surfaced roads including modern motorways. Northern Ireland has had motorways since 1962, and has a well-developed network of primary, secondary and local routes. Historically, the road network in the Republic of Ireland was less well developed and maintained. However, with the advent of the Celtic Tiger and significant European Union funding, most ''national roads'' in the Republic continue to be upgraded. In the 1990s the Republic went from having only a few short sections of motorway to constructing motorways, dual-carriageways and other improvements on most major routes as part of a National Development Plan. Road construction in Northern Ireland has proceeded at a slower pace in recent years, although a number of important bypasses and upgrades to dual carriageway have recently been completed or are about to begin. Roads in Northern Ireland are classified as either Highways, motorways (shown by the letter ''M'' followed by a route number, e.g. M1), A-roads (shown by the letter ''A'' followed by a route number, e.g. A6), B-roads (shown by the letter ''B'' followed by a route number, e.g. B135) and other roads. There are two types of A-roads: primary and non-primary. Roads in the Republic are classified as either motorways (shown by the letter ''M'' followed by a route number, e.g. M7), National roads (shown by the letter ''N'' followed by a route number, e.g. N25), Regional roads (shown by the letter ''R'' followed by a route number, e.g. R611) and Local roads (shown by the letter ''L'' followed by a route number, e.g. L4202). There are two types of National roads: National Primary routes and National Secondary routes. Distance signposts in Northern Ireland show distances in miles, while all signposts placed in the Republic since the 1990s use kilometres. The Republic's road signs are bilingual, using both official languages, Irish and English. The Irish names are written in lower case italic script. Signs in Northern Ireland are in English only. Warning signs in the Republic have a yellow background and are diamond-shaped, those in Northern Ireland are triangle-shaped and have a white background with a red border. Speed limits in Northern Ireland are specified in miles per hour. Those in the Republic use kilometres per hour (km/h or kph), a change introduced on 20 January 2005.〔(UKMA road signs – International experience )〕 This involved the provision of 58,000 new metric speed limit signs, replacing and supplementing 35,000 imperial signs. ==History== (詳細はRoman Empire and, therefore, Roman roads were not built in Ireland. However, an Iron Age road with a stone surface has been excavated in Munster〔() – Science Magazine〕 and togher ((アイルランド語:tóchar)) roads, a type of causeway built through bogs, were found in many areas of the country.〔() – Library Ireland: A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland〕 According to an entry〔() – UCC: CELT〕 in the Annals of the Four Masters for AD 123, there were five principal highways ((アイルランド語:slighe)) leading to Tara ((アイルランド語:Teamhair)) in Early Medieval Ireland. Early medieval law-tracts〔() – Archaeology〕 set out five types of road including the highway (''slighe''), the '() main road' (''ród'' or ''rout''), the 'connecting road' (''lámraite''), the 'side road' (''tógraite'') which could be tolled, and the 'cow road' (''bóthar''). ''Bóthar'' is the most common term for 'road' in modern Irish: its diminutive form, ''bóithrín'', (or boreen in English) is used as a term for very narrow, rural roads. The development of roads in Ireland seemed to have stagnated until the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries. However, in the 18th century, a network of turnpike roads (charging tolls) was built: "a turnpike was a primitive form of turnstile – a gate across the road, opened on payment of a toll. The average length of a turnpike road was 30 miles". Routes to and from Dublin were developed initially and the network spread throughout the country. Turnpikes operated between 1729 and 1858 when the extensive railway network made them increasingly unpopular.〔() – Sunday Business Post〕 Specialist routes to facilitate the butter trade, which centred on Cork, were built in Munster. The first ''butter road'' was commissioned in 1748 and was built by John Murphy of Castleisland in County Kerry.〔() – Ireland of the Welcomes〕 In other areas, notably in County Wicklow, military roads were built to help secure British military control over remote areas. The Military Road through County Wicklow was begun in 1800 and completed in 1809.〔() – John Godden: the Military Road〕 The R115 is part of the Military Road for its entire length. Railways became the dominant form of land transport from the mid-19th century. This situation persisted until the first half of the 20th century when motorised road transport (cars, buses and trucks) gradually began to take over from railways as the most important form of land transport. Pre-independence legislation (the Ministry of Transport Act, 1919〔() – OPSI〕) laid the foundation for the regulation of the modern system of public roads in Ireland. The Act gave the Minister for Local Government the power to classify roads: Trunk Road Funds were used to enable local councils to improve major roads and road surfacing was gradually undertaken throughout the 1920s, 1930s and beyond. By the 1950s an established system of road classification and numbering with Trunk Roads and Link Roads had long been developed. The present system of road classification and numbering began in 1977 when twenty-five National primary roads and thirty-three National secondary roads were designated. Regional roads were first formally designated in 1994, although Regional road route-numbers began appearing on signposts in the 1980s. The ( Roads Act 1993 ) also classified all public roads which are not national or regional roads as local roads. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Roads in Ireland」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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