Motorway network of a country

Roads are ways tagged highway=…. Long roads are split into many ways, so the motorways of a country are thousands of segments.

The query

[out:json][timeout:60];
area["ISO3166-1"="CH"][admin_level=2]->.ch;
way["highway"="motorway"](area.ch);
out geom;

Run it

Live result from overpass.ch, cached for up to 12 hours. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

How it works

1. way["highway"="motorway"] returns the carriageways; ramps are motorway_link.
2. out geom; adds coordinates to every way. Without it you get only node IDs.

Variations

• Add expressways: ["highway"~"^(motorway|trunk)$"].
• To get whole roads instead of segments, query the route relations: rel["route"="road"]["ref"="A1"].

Run it from your code

curl https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter \
  --data-urlencode 'data@query.overpassql'

import requests

query = open("query.overpassql").read()
r = requests.post("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter",
                  data={"data": query}, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
print(r.json()["elements"][:3])

const res = await fetch("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter", {
  method: "POST",
  body: new URLSearchParams({ data: query }),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(await res.text());
console.log(await res.json());

Save the query as query.overpassql. It works the same in Overpass Turbo, QGIS and JOSM.