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Saturday 11 July 2015

Highway

At the peak of the Roman Empire, there were 29 military highways radiating from Rome.

The total length of hard-surfaced highways constructed by the Romans has been estimated to be well over 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometres), much of which is still visible today after so many centuries.

Scottish engineer John McAdam (1756-1836) had become increasingly frustrated with highways that were often impassable because of rain and mud. He came up with a revolutionary method of road construction, which involved placing tightly packed layers of smaller stones bound with fine gravel on a base of large stones with adequate drainage to carry away rainfall. This macadamisation of roads did much to ease travel and communication and the process was quickly adopted in many other European countries and North America.

Heavy road traffic around "Dead Man's Curve" in Negaunee, Michigan, along with the tendency of many drivers to follow the inside of a curve, prompted a highway official to paint the USA's first center line in 1911.

The initial section of the Lincoln Highway, the first automobile road across United States, was dedicated on December 13, 1913. It ran from Newark, New Jersey, to Jersey City, New Jersey.

Essex and Hudson Lincoln Highway in Jersey City, New Jersey

In 1925 a group of state and federal highway officials began number highways with standardized road signs. Later, north-south highways were assigned odd numbers and east-west routes were given even numbers.


The Queen Elizabeth Way is a 400-Series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario, which begins at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie and travels 86.4 miles around the western shore of Lake Ontario, ending at Highway 427. When it was initially opened in 1937, it was the first intercity divided highway in North America and featured the longest stretch of consistent illumination in the world.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened on October 1, 1940 between Irwin and Carlisle. It is considered to be the first superhighway in the United States, leading to the construction of other limited-access toll roads and the Interstate Highway System.

Laurel Hill Tunnel in 1942

The Alaska Highway was constructed during World War II for the purpose of connecting the contiguous United States to Alaska through Canada. It was completed on October 28, 1942 at a length of approximately 1,700 miles.

Southern terminus of the Alaska Highway (Dawson Creek) By Jadecolour Wikipedia,

The Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. At 512 billion dollars, it was the most expensive Mega-Project.

The Interstate Highway System, was built and championed by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, because he gained an appreciation of the German Autobahn system while he was serving as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II. L

Also Eisenhower was an observer in 1919 when the U.S. Army organized a convoy of 81 vehicles from Washington, DC to San Francisco,. The trip took 56 travel days, broke 9 vehicles, had 21 casualties and convinced him to champion the Interstate Highway System,. 

America's Interstate Highway System was motivated by National Defense as much as it was by commerce. Eisenhower's military experience convinced him highways were needed to redeploy troops if America was invaded or nuked.

The Trans-Canada Highway travels through all ten provinces of Canada between its Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean. It is, along with the Trans-Siberian Highway and Australia's Highway 1, one of the world's longest national highways, with the main route spanning 8,030 kilometers (4,990 mi). The highway which officially opened on June 30, 1962, is recognizable by its distinctive white-on-green maple leaf route markers.


There are electric charging stations all along the Trans Canada Highway, making it the world's longest electric vehicle highway.

Highway 401 is a 400-series highway in Ontario stretching 508.2 miles (817.9 kilometres). The portion that passes through Toronto is the busiest highway in the world, and one of the widest (18 lanes pictured near Toronto Pearson International Airport).

The Darien Gap is a 160 km (100 mi) gap of nearly impassible marsh and jungle between Panama and Colombia that prevents the construction of a road between North and South America and is the only missing piece in connecting the Pan-American Highway

Despite the 106 km gap, the Pan-American Highway is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest street in the world. It comprises a network of roads of 30,000 miles length from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina.

The longest US highway is route 6 which starts in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and ends in Bishop, California.

The digits of interstate highways in the USA have meaning. For example, even-numbered highways like I10 and I90 run east-west, while odd-numbered highways like I5 and I95 run north-south.

All the U.S. Interstate highways lined up would stretch about 47,000 miles—enough to circle the contiguous U.S. almost five times.


Highways in the western USA are based on the migratory routes of bison.

Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited record is named after Route 61, the highway that goes through his home state Minnesota through the Mississippi Delta.

A stretch of Route 66, between Albuquerque and Tijeras, will play "America the Beautiful" as you drive over added grooves in the road. If you drive the speed limit of 45 mph for the quarter-mile stretch, you can hear "America the Beautiful" play through the vibrations in your car's wheels.

The white dashed lines on US highways are 10 feet long. And the space in between them run 30 feet long. Most people believe that they’re only 2-4 feet long at most.

The raised reflectors in between lanes on an American highway also indicate direction. Normally they reflect white or yellow but if they appear red, it’s because the driver is going the wrong way.

Southern Californians put a "the" before freeway numbers because Los Angeles had freeways with local names long before the rest of the country.

In Nevada it is illegal to ride a camel on the highway.

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