A50 autoroute

The A50 autoroute is a French motorway connecting Marseille to Toulon. The motorway is 65 km and has a mixture of 2x2 and 2x3 lanes that run through mountainous coastal terrain along the Mediterranean. As such, it has some relatively sharp turns and steep gradients by French motorway standards, and some sections have a reduced speed limit of 110 km/h.

The first section between Marseille and Aubagne was opened in 1962 and was until 1963 part of the A52 autoroute until it was renumbered after the surrounding motorways were constructed. Most of the remainder between Aubagne and Toulon was completed by 1975. The road is tolled between Roquefort-la-Bédoule and Sanary-sur-Mer and is managed by ESCOTA and was the first section to trial Télépéage or Télébadge, an automatic toll payment system using a windscreen mounted sensor, in 1992.

At the eastern end of the A50, drivers can choose between entering Toulon by the RN 8 or crossing under the city by going through the tunnel de Toulon, which leads directly to the A57 autoroute and on to Hyeres and Nice. The southern carriageway of the tunnel finally opened in 2014, after some 20 years of planning and construction, making the tunnel a 2x2 lane two-way link between the A50 and A57. Until then, the tunnel had only a two-lane carriageway running east to west, which opened in 2002.[1]