The
A roads (
Lithuanian: magistraliniai keliai) total 1,748.84 km (1,086.68 mi).
A1Vilnius –
Kaunas –
Klaipėda, 311.40 km (193.49 mi). Most important east to west corridor in
Lithuania. Connects three largest Lithuanian cities:
Vilnius,
Kaunas and
Klaipėda. Most of the road has motorway status.
A2Vilnius –
Panevėžys, 135.92 km (84.46 mi). The stretch between
Vilnius and Šilagalis has motorway status.
Before
World War I, there were few isolated routes suitable for transit traffic e.g. present day
A12 highway, connecting
Riga with
Kaliningrad, or present day
A6 highway which was part of highway
Warsaw–
Saint Petersburg that ran through
Kaunas. After Lithuania became an independent country in 1918, there was increased demand for new highways for inner needs. First long-distance highways built exclusively by the Lithuanian government were opened in the late 1930s. These are following:
Samogitian highway – old highway built in the 1930s, connecting Kaunas and Klaipėda. Road section between Kaunas and
Ariogala is now completely refurbished to
motorway, and the road section from Ariogala to Klaipėda is serving as alternative road for a parallelly-built
A1 motorway and connects local towns such as Ariogala,
Raseiniai and
Rietavas.
Aukštaitian highway – old highway built in the 1930s. It connects Kaunas,
Kėdainiai,
Panevėžys and
Biržai to Riga. After building an original route, new routes were built through the course of Soviet Union and after its dissolution. The road was gradually rerouted to avoid larger urban areas, and now runs from
Sitkūnai, bypasses Kėdainiai, Panevėžys,
Pasvalys, Biržai, and reaches Latvian border to Riga. Rerouted highway is now part of
Via Baltica.