Between the towers of Vilnius and Kaunas: Lithuanians planned the highway that would connect the country’s largest cities already in the interwar period | Did you know?

Some road from Vilnius to Kaunas is believed to exist practically as much as both cities, so for a good seven centuries.

At first, it was a gravel road that ran through forests and fields like a pagan snake, with merchants, mail wagons, and stories about the greatness of the duchy.

The road from the coast to Vilnius, including Kaunas, may have been the oldest surface for travel in the western territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Since the 18th century, there has also been a documented official postal route between the two cities, with which postal wagons and their robbers quickly collided. Napoleon’s army marched to Moscow, which was not drowning in fire, it also traveled this stretch.

Have you ever noticed that the Rykantai oak grows in the middle of the road? Local legends still tell how the emperor himself rested on his oak trunk during his march to Russia.

During the reign of the Tsar, mail and all kinds of goods continued to be transported successfully by road between the centers of the two provinces. The interest began when Lithuania declared its independence. The young state had a large number of dirt roads that hardly turned to mud. And independence also had to be defended at gunpoint.

In such a situation, road construction was certainly not a concern, especially when there were only a few hundred cars at the time. The road between Vilnius and Kaunas was no exception. The situation may have improved over time, but history passed and Vilnius remained outside the demarcation line.

In fairness, it is worth noting that the infrastructure of Vilnius, which was part of Poland, was maintained. The road from Vilnius to Lazdėnai (the boundary of the demarcation line) was renovated in 1936 on the basis of concrete blocks typical of all of Poland at that time.

Part of this road was after the A1, but a section survived to this day. It is true that it is rarely used, but you can try it yourself.

The first surviving part of the old road turns away from Vilnius Savanorių Avenue and winds up Paneriai Hill, slides to EMSI gas station and turns onto Trakai Road. The road is steep and very narrow, apparently due to the inconvenience of adapting it to the A1 motorway, the route bypassed this relic.

An interesting traffic regulation procedure is related to this narrowness: the crew of a carriage that was rolling over it began to scream when they reached the landing. The sound warned those below not to climb Paneriai Hill. Unless they wanted to feel the story of the two goats on the bridge as characters.

Another section of the road that is preserved is in Grigiškės. It is part of present-day Kaunas Vokės Street. The pavement of the old road stretches for about a kilometer and better meets the needs of the settlement even today.

Another place where you can feel the spirit of the old road is the city of Rykantai, where the asphalt road is very visible from the windows of Kaunas.

After crossing the demarcation line with ancestor A1, we returned to interwar Lithuania. The first Republic of Lithuania grew stronger and its further growth required good roads.

In the summer of 1939, the Samogitian highway was inaugurated with great celebrations, and in the autumn of the same year, Vilnius returned to the embrace of Lithuania (it is true, in fact, a Trojan horse for independence). And here the most interesting part began.

Already at that time, the Kaunas bureaucrats realized that in order to re-integrate the historic Lithuanian capital into the current Lithuanian body, the flow of movement between Kaunas and Vilnius would inevitably intensify. The roads of that time would not be very capable of supporting such loads.

Thus, at the meeting of the Lithuanian Society of Engineers and Architects held in Kaunas in the fall of 1939, engineer A. Barauskas, who was in charge of road maintenance in Lithuania, presented the vision of the road between Kaunas and Vilnius. .

The road had three objectives: a) to be as short and conveniently connected to the settlements as possible; b) be a green belt divided by a two-road motorway, which, as the number of cars in Lithuania increases, could create pre-conditions for comfortable smoking between the two capitals; (c) the technical conditions of the road must not be inferior to those built elsewhere.

We did not find any source to corroborate that idea of ​​ours, but we speculate that the idea of ​​the road of the future was born by looking at the highways that were rapidly stalking Germany at the time.

Even the proposed Lithuanian bus route would have almost coincided with today’s. Entrance to Vilnius should only have been allowed, not via Savanori avenue, but via the current Šeškinė highway from Ukmergė.

This objective was intended to be achieved from Lazdėnai by turning the road through the Nėris valley and connecting it with the final stop via Zujūnai. A well thought-out solution would ensure communication with the Ukmergė highway without forcing traffic flows from the city.

It would have been possible to travel at a speed of up to 120 km / h per hour on a highway of about a hundred kilometers, reducing travel between capitals to one hour. And there is no horse traffic, this had to be diverted down a gravel road built on the sides. Only you, the road and the wheel of the popular Chevrolet in interwar Lithuania are in your hands.

This pleasure would have cost about 15 million litas at that time, and it took about fifteen years to build.

A really ambitious project, considering that the first asphalt in Lithuania – Kaunas Laisvės Alley, was only a decade ago before this speech.

The Vilnius-Kaunas car would be a real gem of the region’s roads, which would have undoubtedly decorated the landscape of the roads of the entire region and restored the image of modern Lithuania.

We do not even doubt that the idea could have been implemented, but there was a red catastrophe and World War II, which blocked the development of Lithuanian roads for decades.

Only in the 1960s did the construction of the Kaunas-Vilnius highway begin, the idea of ​​which was born during the first Republic of Lithuania. Unfortunately, in our day it is undeservedly forgotten.

The text was first published on the Facebook page “Summa gear”. Reproduced with permission of the authors of the page.