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European Route E80 connects 9 or 10 countries: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, (Kosovo), Bulgaria, Turkey, apparently stopping at the Iranian border.

Which officially numbered road connects the largest number of countries?

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  • 3
    To be clear: You are counting the road in Iran despite that it has a different number?
    – Michael Hampton
    Jan 13, 2018 at 2:33
  • @MichaelHampton Finally, no, I'm not. I was counting it because I thought it was still called E80. If it's not than it stops in Turkey and is one country less. Edited question to clarify..
    – gerrit
    Jan 13, 2018 at 11:18
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    I do not feel that a road going through several countries by the same name is really one road. More so as many of the European routes have different local numbers and the only reason they are seen internationally as the same road is a number added as an afterthought.
    – Willeke ♦
    Jan 13, 2018 at 13:09
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    @RHA no, but it does "work applying numbers on roads across [multiple] [countries]", which is all that LessPop is claiming.
    – AakashM
    Jan 15, 2018 at 10:10
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    European route numbers are designated by UNECE, not the EU. They manage some other cross-border issues in addition to road numbering.
    – gerrit
    Jan 15, 2018 at 10:25

2 Answers 2

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The biggest issue is what defines a road, a country and where a road starts or ends.

That being said, there are two likely candidates:

Option 1: The Pan American Highway:

The Northern Pan-American Highway travels through 9 countries:

Canada (unofficial)
United States (interstate system official)
Mexico
Guatemala
El Salvador
Honduras
Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Panama

The Southern Pan-American Highway travels through 8 countries:

Suriname
Guyana
Venezuela
Colombia
Ecuador
Peru
Chile
Argentina

Important spurs also lead into 4 countries:

Bolivia
Brazil
Paraguay
Uruguay

Option 2: AH1 (with the E80 extension):

This travels from Japan through Hong Kong, China, all the way to Turkey, and connects to the E80 to Portugal, connecting over 20 countries. However, connecting over the ocean is interesting, as is joining two roads, and whether or not you count countries like Hong Kong as actual countries.

However, I'm pretty confident with whatever mechanism you use to measure, the outcome will be one of the above two options.

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Based on your example European Route 40 goes through 10 countries.

France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

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