Where in the world has the straightest roads? | Hacker News Reader

Where in the world has the straightest roads?

technomancy.org

30 pointsdalek2point320 comments

Once Google Maps reached sufficiently high-resolution satellite images to actually see all of the gravel roads, I was actually a bit awestruck. The majority of the state of Iowa looks like a sheet of graph paper.

I grew up a in the region and spent plenty of time driving around endless country roads. It's just so weird to see it from above, all at once. Makes one appreciate the skill of surveying without the modern aid of gps.

I grew up in Iowa and spent a fair amount of time chasing hot-air balloons (my dad is a full time balloonist).

The grid system was pretty nice until I came to a river and had to find the nearest bridge.

The prairies of Canada are divided out like this as well, due to the Dominion Land Survey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Land_Survey

And for an arbitrary Google Earth location in Saskatchewan: https://goo.gl/maps/ZsTQj

Interesting, could you show some link or screenshots of some cool areas?

In Australia, we have a 146 km straight stretch of road[1]. That's part of 1000 km+ of pretty-much-straight road[2][3]. It's difficult to express how isolated that area is.

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-10-13/sign-at-the-start-of-9...

[2] http://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/11/the-long-and-lonely-eyr...

[3] https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-32.5176141,126.9613846,7z

Very well presented and interesting analysis.

Primary compliments I also have in particular for the author is inclusion of a link to source code and the concise but complete and informative "tools used section" describing the process. I wish more analysis (particularly those presented on more reputable news outlets) was presented with a similar section for reproducibility and exposure to analysis techniques.

The site's not loading for me (swamped?) so this is based just on what I can infer, but the thing that popped into my mind was the U.S. Midwest. As an avid motorcyclist, I am always seeking out curvy roads. I just got back from a three week vacation in Italy where there was rarely a straight road to be found (in the Chianti area, the GPS would be set for fastest route, the destination would be 60 kilometers away, and the GPS would estimate 2 hours to arrive.). But there are areas in Kansas where, if the earth were flat, you could see someone 30 miles ahead of you .

It turns out that while Kansas is indeed flatter than a pancake, other US states are even flatter. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/scienc...

I'd be interested in calculating just a subset of roads and comparing to the overall average. Dual carriageways are the most likely to adapt the terrain to the road rather than building the road to the terrain. If I recall correctly, Germany has the strictest requirements for the straightness, and the States has a rule that every X miles must have a section that can be converted to an impromptu landing strip. The website is completely crushed right now, but once it's back I may play with the data.

> States has a rule that every X miles must have a section that can be converted to an impromptu landing strip

This is not true.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/00mayjun/on...

http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/airstrip.asp

It's not as ridiculous an idea as Snopes makes it sound - there are plenty of places which do put those large expanses of tarmac to dual use. I remember seeing a stretch of highway in Switzerland which was also a military airstrip (flat stretches of ground being at something of a premium in the Alps). There are plenty of real examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_strip

Netherland has a lot of polders, which are very flat, and particularly the largest polders (Flevoland, Wieringermeer, Haarlemmermeer) are very recent (last 200 years) and have a lot of perfectly straight roads. It's a shame the Afsluitdijk got divided between 4 pixels instead of getting its own pixel, or you might have had one pixel of 100% there.

Also, we're pretty boring and organized people. You should see how perfectly the trees in our "forests" are lined up. Also straight.

The map doesn't show Australia for me, which I suspect must be a contender for straightest roads.

Weirdly, it doesn't, for the data it has. But most of Australia is white, with no data.

OT but curious (non-english native here): Is the title correct or some kind of saying? „Where in the world has the straightest roads?“

It is not specifically a saying, but it could be a variation on the title of a popular computer game from the 80's: "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_in_the_World_Is_Carmen_S...

Seems understandable to me, but you're right that "are" would be a better verb in that position than "has". I suspect that the original headline started with "Which nation in the world has". A competent editor would have elided "in the world" rather than changing "Which nation" to "Where".

Native english speaker, and the title does sound a bit weird, though I haven't looked up any authority on whether it's technically correct or not.

A more idiomatic version would be "What place in the world has the straightest roads?"

(not a saying. The phrase is oddly worded, but not too weird) Alternate: Which (part of the)(place in the) world has the straightest roads?

<>Maine

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