Portugal Road Map
Road construction was seen as a priority in the early 1990s, driven by rapid growth in the use of automobiles and industrialization. Portugal has a road network of 82,900 km, of which at least 3,000 km are part of the system of 44 motorways. Portugal was one of the first countries in the world to have a highway, in 1944, and it linked Lisbon with the National Stadium, in what would be in the future the Lisbon-Cascais motorway (now A5). However, although other stretches of freeways were built in the 1960s and 1970s, it was only in the late 1980s that large-scale highway construction began. Currently, the network of motorways and highways is very developed and links the coast with the main cities of the interior, with a network of 3000 km. There are also main itineraries and complementary itineraries that can be composed of highways and express roads.