A state highway, state road, or state route (and the equivalent provincial highway, provincial road, or provincial route) is usually a road that is either numbered or maintained by a sub-national state or province. A road numbered by a state or province falls below numbered national highways (Canada being a notable exception to this rule) in the hierarchy (route numbers are used to aid navigation, and may or may not indicate ownership or maintenance). Roads maintained by a state or province include both nationally numbered highways and un-numbered state highways. Depending on the state, "state highway" may be used for one meaning and "state road" or "state route" for the other. In some countries such as New Zealand, the word "state" is used in its sense of a sovereign state or country. By this meaning a state highway is a road maintained and numbered by the national government rather than local authorities. Countries Australia Australia's State Route system covers urban and inter-regional routes that are not included in the National Route or the National Highway systems. These routes are marked with a blue shield. Sometimes a state route may be formed when a former national route is decommissioned. Most states and territories have introduced an alphanumeric route numbering system, either completely or partially replacing the previous systems. Brazil Brazil is another country that is divided into states and has state highways. Canada Canada is divided into provinces and territories, each of which maintains its own system of provincial or territorial highways, which form the majority of the country's highway network. There is also the national transcontinental Trans-Canada Highway system, which is marked by distinct signs, but has no uniform numeric designation across the country. In the eastern provinces, for instance, an unnumbered (though sometimes with a named route branch) Trans-Canada route marker is co-signed with a numbered provincial sign, with the provincial route often continuing alone outside the Trans-Canada Highway section. However, in the western provinces, the two parallel Trans-Canada routes are consistently numbered with Trans-Canada route markers; as Highways 1 and 16 respectively. Canada also has a designated National Highway System, but the system is completely unsigned, aside from the Trans-Canada routes. This makes Canada unique in that national highway designations are generally secondary to subnational routes. Germany In Germany, state roads () are a road class which is ranking below the federal road network (). The responsibility for