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How to tell if motorway service stations will be in the next village and not on the roadside

 

How to tell if motorway service stations will be in the next village and not on the roadside

thinkSPAIN Team 15/07/2020

How to tell if motorway service stations will be in the next village and not on the roadside
A LEADING car sales site has revealed a handy trick to help drivers tell whether a service station is alongside the motorway they are on, or whether it involves turning off into a town or village at a distance.

Long journeys can be tiring and stressful enough, but on routes where petrol stations are a long distance apart or, at night, when the nearest one may have shut at 22.00, this stress can turn to sheer panic if the needle is fast dropping towards the red and there is little sign of anywhere to refill.

One particular service station-free road which has caught out several drivers is the A-38, from Sollana just south of Valencia to Gandia in the far south of the province – after leaving Valencia airport and turning onto the A-7 motorway, there are no 24-hour petrol stations south of Torrent and none south of Picassent until the A-38 junction in Sollana, which shuts at 22.00.

After this, there are fill-up points in Sueca and Cullera, which close between 20.30 and 22.00.

Between Torrent on the A-7 and Xeraco on the N-332, there are no 24-hour petrol stations along this route at all – a stretch of 64 kilometres.

And when fuel is running low, someone needs the toilet or the driver is gasping for a drink or desperate to stop and get out, finding that the petrol station you have turned off for is actually down a long country road in the next village can be extremely frustrating.

Motor sales website Forocoches says knowing this in advance is all about the distances signposted.

If the service station sign shows it is coming up in 500 or 1,000 metres, it means it will be right alongside the motorway.

But if the signs show the next petrol station is 250 or 750 metres away, it will normally be on a secondary road.

These are not necessarily much more than a few metres from the motorway – although they can be – but they will always be set apart from the highway and typically belong to a nearby town or village rather than being purpose-built as a motorway service area.

The above photograph, from Wikipedia, shows a petrol station sign on the A-23 motorway through Aragón – as it shows the turn-off is in 500 metres, this means it is alongside the road.

Also, according to the Forocoches site, the colour of the signs is important.

Where the service station is on a blue sign, it will be next to the motorway; if it is green, it will be on a secondary road, which is normally a main highway but tends to be single-carriageway; and if it is white, it means driving down a local country or town road to get there.

 

How to spot motorways and why it matters

These colours apply to all types of signs indicating distance and place on Spain's roads, not just service stations – if you're on a back road and a blue sign points off towards a given location, you'll know that getting there involves motorways.

In the past, depending upon where you were travelling, it was helpful to know this to avoid paying tolls, but several motorways in Spain which used to attract a fee are now free of charge.

They include the AP-7 between Castellón and Valencia and from Silla (near Valencia city) to San Juan, just north of Alicante city, where the tolls were scrapped on New Year's Day this year.

One of the busiest and most international motorways in Spain – since it continues in one direction through to northern France and, in another, to the Costa del Sol; and once it crosses the Pyrénées into Spain, gives access to the entire east coast of the mainland – the toll fees have been a bone of contention for decades, especially along stretches where the ticket cost nearly doubled the amount drivers would spend in fuel.

In other parts of the country, though, the very small amount the tolls cost is worth it to be able to make the journey in half the time and along much safer roads.

An ongoing government 'buy-back' of toll motorways, however, means these are shrinking in number and could end up being limited to a handful of outer-city 'radial' routes costing a few cents per stretch.

 

 

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