The IRPUD road network is stored in three ASCII files:

The following table shows the contents of the file ROADLINK.DAT:

Notes:

Border links are zero-length pseudo links between two border nodes with identical coordinates each belonging to one country (see ROADNODE.DAT). Border links serve to assign border-related impedances (e.g. waiting time) to border crossings. Because they cannot be assigned to any one country, border links have the country code 'XX'. Similarly, car ferry links have the country code 'YY'.

Access links are functional pseudo links used for transport modelling to connect the network. Centroids represent the centres of transport modelling zones and are used their as origins and destinations. Each centroid is connected to the real-word network via one or several access links. Transport zones here correspond to level 2 of the 'Nomenclature d'unités territoriales statistiques' (NUTS). If transport models are not to be applied, the access links (and so the centroid nodes) can be dropped from the network without harming the overall network as such.

The link-ID is a unique identifier identifying a link. It serves to relate the coordinate information contained in file ROADARC.DAT to the links in file ROADLINK.DAT. This makes it possible to have more than one link between a pair of nodes. Unlike node-IDs, which are permanently assigned to nodes, link-IDs change from one update of the network database to the next.

The link type, link category, speed and ferry travel times give general information on links. Border links have the same link category as the neighbouring links. Speed indicates the national speed limits according to the link category and country. Access links have a general speed of 30 km/h and border links a general speed of 1,000 km/h. For ferry links and the Eurotunnel link, speed item is not set. Conversely, the item ferry travel times give travel times in minutes for these links. For regular road links, access or border links, this item shows a value of zero.

The TEN category, TEN alignment, road category and TEN priority indicate the inclusion of the specified link in the TEN and TINA programmes according to European Commission (1996) and TINA Secretariat (1999). Information on those links which are included in the "Trans European Transport Network Outline Plan, Section Road" are taken from the Joint Decision of the European Parliament and of the Council pulished in the Official Journal of the European Communities (L228, 9 September 1996). Information on those links which are included in the TINA networks are taken from "TINA Transport Infrastructure needs Assessment. Identification of the Network Components for a Future trans-European Transport Network in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia" (TINA Secretariat 1999) as agreed between the European Union and the candidate countries.

Strategic network indicates whether the link is part of the strategic road network. The strategic road network is a sunset of the total network used in the DGVII projects STREAMS, SASI and STEMM. The strategic road network contains the trans-European road links specified in Decision 1692/96/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council for the EU member states, the TINA networks as agreed between the European Union ant tde candidate countries, the 'Helsinki' corridors towards eastern Europe as well as selected additional links in eastern Europe and further links to guarantee connectivity of regions and centroids.

The following table gives the contents of the file ROADNODE.DAT:

Bytes	Length	Type	Contents
1-10	10	Real	Node-ID xxx.yyyy   xxx = Region-ID (see note)   yyyy = Node number   0000 = Centroid   0001 ... Node number in region
11-20	10	Integer	X coordinate (m)
21-30	10	Integer	Y coordinate (m)
31-34	4	Character	ISO country code (see note)
35-38	4	Character	Region code (see note)
39-42	3	Integer	Node type   0 = Centroid   1 = Border node (see note)   2 = Road node   3 = Car ferry seaport   4 = Motorway interchange   5 = Motorway exit

Notes:

The NODEID is a unique number for each node in the network. The first three digits indicate the number of the region in which the node is located. The region code is a four-character acronym of the name of the region. The ISO country code indicates the country in which the node is located.

The regions are regions of the system of regions defined for the STREAMS and SASI projects. They correspond largely to NUTS-2 regions defined by Eurostat plus equivalent extensions outside the European Union. A more detailed description of the system of regions is available.

The main city (not necessarily the greatest city) of each region is assigned to the region as the centroid. For each region the nodes are counted from 0000, with 0000 indicating the centroid.

Border nodes are nodes at national borders. At each border crossing there are two border nodes with identical coordinates each belonging to one country. The two nodes are connected by a zero-length border link (see ROADLINK.DAT).

The following tables give information on the file ROADARC.DAT:

This file gives information on the alignment of the road links between nodes by the coordinates of its vertices. This information is used for mapping.

For each link, the file contains a block of records. Each block of records consists of a header record and one record for each vertex of the link. The number of records used for each link depends on the number of the vertices as each vertex is written in a separate record.

The header record has the following format:

Bytes	Length	Type	Contents
1-10	10	Integer	Link-ID (see ROADLINK.DAT)
11-20	10	Real	Node-ID, From-node (see ROADNODE.DAT)
21-30	10	Real	Node-ID, To-node (see ROADNODE.DAT)
31-35	5	Integer	Number of vertex coordinate pairs following

The records containing the vertex coordinates have the following format:

Bytes	Length	Type	Contents
1-10	10	Integer	X coordinate (m)
11-20	10	Integer	Y coordinate (m)

© 2002 IRPUD

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