Changes

Rest areas often serve one direction of a motorway, but often rest areas in both directions of the motorway are situated opposite eachother each other or within a short distance of eachothereach other. However, in some countries rest areas serve both sides of the motorway, as the drivers from one side are facilitated with connecting roads. Such rest areas are quite common in the [[United Kingdom]] and in [[Austria]] and are somewhat less suitable for hitchhiking as the rest areas which are only accessible from one side. There are even some situations, for example in [[Austria]], where rest areas are situated on the junction of two motorways, which are therefore used by traffic going into four directions. This in general is certainly not an advantage when looking for rides on these stations.

Although the traffic in both motorway directions remains separated, some rest areas, typically restaurants, serve both sides of a motorway. In those cases both sides of the motorway are connected by a pedestrians only tunnel, a pedestrians only bridge or a bridge restaurant, like the huge '''Dammer Berge''' bridge restaurant on the A1 in Germany, and on those it's obviously easy to cross the motorway should you need to do so. On others there are sometimes crossings for (official) vehicles that can also be used by pedestrians. On occasion you may have to walk a fair distance to get to the other side of a motorway. Crossing the motorway using a bridge or tunnel is not always possible. In Germany passing to the opposite rest area is almost often, but not always , possible through so-called "service roads".