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As a European it boggles my mind on how many long and straight roads there are around the bridge. Here in the Netherlands we can't keep a road straight for more

As a European it boggles my mind on how many long and straight roads there are around the bridge. Here in the Netherlands we can't keep a road straight for more than a few kilometers even on new land we created from the sea: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Flevoland/@52.382114,5.3861645,11.75z https://www.google.com/maps/place/Flevoland/@52.382114,5.386...

friendzis 8y ago
This MAY be intentional. One of the ideas behind "urbanism" is that in order to reduce vehicle speeds, design speed of a road must be low and the main technical measures are speed bumps, road width and curvature - if you make a road narrow and curvy, it is technically difficult to speed there.
- zaarn 8y ago
  You get curves like that on the german Autobahn too. The problem is that in Europe, you don't get very far without running into either a hill, a swamp or a town, in which case your options are limited. A hill can only be so steep until the trucks can't go over anymore without dropping to unsafe speeds (60kph are the legal minimum when driving on the Autobahn, trucks need to be able to go faster and do so safely). A swap can be expensive to go over so you might do a slight curve and only go over a small part of it to save money. A town might not allow the autobahn to go through or might only allow it on the outer edges. That's in addition to the fact that lots of roads in Europe are historical, ie, grown from the paths that people have always used between cities, so they don't take a straight, optimal path to begin with.
  - hef19898 8y ago
    Another eeason for this is to keep drivers alert. Even small "course corrections" raise awareness of a driver which is the driving force behind non-straight routes in Europe, besides geography of course. The only rwaly straight sections on the German Autobahn are relicts from the Cold War. The plan was to use them, no joke, together with any parking lots next to them as back-up military airfields. But they are getting rare nowadays.
refurb 8y ago
Not that this completely answers your question, but this is in the middle of the Canadian prairies. It’s very sparsely populated (less than a million in the province of SK that’s about the size of California - with 2/3 in the capital city). It’s amazingly flat. I can remember seeing thunderstorms over a town that I just spent 2 hours driving away from at highway speeds (~200 km away). It’s mostly partitioned out into huge, square farm land tracts. Basically there isn’t much stopping you from building roads that run straight for hundreds of kilometers.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Roads also tend to follow established routes because infrastructure tends to pop up along well traveled places. Europe is full of wacky routes because some farmers in the 1100s had go go around the land of the lord that was feuding with their lord in order to trade with the people in a village on the land of a lord who was on good terms with their lord. Then someone built an inn along the route, then another village popped up, etc, etc Except for the eastern edge, North America has neither of those sources of "legacy road" that constrain the design of new roads. You can just build straight lines from A to B to C.
Serow225 8y ago
Growing up in the area, we referred to these informally as "grid roads". They have an interesting history! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_in_Saskatchewan?section=4#Dominion_Land_Survey_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_in_Saskatchewan?section=... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_in_Saskatchewan?section=4#Township_roads_and_range_roads https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_in_Saskatchewan?section=...

friendzis 8y ago

This MAY be intentional. One of the ideas behind "urbanism" is that in order to reduce vehicle speeds, design speed of a road must be low and the main technical measures are speed bumps, road width and curvature - if you make a road narrow and curvy, it is technically difficult to speed there.

zaarn 8y ago
You get curves like that on the german Autobahn too. The problem is that in Europe, you don't get very far without running into either a hill, a swamp or a town, in which case your options are limited. A hill can only be so steep until the trucks can't go over anymore without dropping to unsafe speeds (60kph are the legal minimum when driving on the Autobahn, trucks need to be able to go faster and do so safely). A swap can be expensive to go over so you might do a slight curve and only go over a small part of it to save money. A town might not allow the autobahn to go through or might only allow it on the outer edges. That's in addition to the fact that lots of roads in Europe are historical, ie, grown from the paths that people have always used between cities, so they don't take a straight, optimal path to begin with.
- hef19898 8y ago
  Another eeason for this is to keep drivers alert. Even small "course corrections" raise awareness of a driver which is the driving force behind non-straight routes in Europe, besides geography of course. The only rwaly straight sections on the German Autobahn are relicts from the Cold War. The plan was to use them, no joke, together with any parking lots next to them as back-up military airfields. But they are getting rare nowadays.

refurb 8y ago

Not that this completely answers your question, but this is in the middle of the Canadian prairies. It’s very sparsely populated (less than a million in the province of SK that’s about the size of California - with 2/3 in the capital city). It’s amazingly flat. I can remember seeing thunderstorms over a town that I just spent 2 hours driving away from at highway speeds (~200 km away). It’s mostly partitioned out into huge, square farm land tracts. Basically there isn’t much stopping you from building roads that run straight for hundreds of kilometers.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Roads also tend to follow established routes because infrastructure tends to pop up along well traveled places. Europe is full of wacky routes because some farmers in the 1100s had go go around the land of the lord that was feuding with their lord in order to trade with the people in a village on the land of a lord who was on good terms with their lord. Then someone built an inn along the route, then another village popped up, etc, etc Except for the eastern edge, North America has neither of those sources of "legacy road" that constrain the design of new roads. You can just build straight lines from A to B to C.

Serow225 8y ago

Growing up in the area, we referred to these informally as "grid roads". They have an interesting history! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_in_Saskatchewan?section=4#Dominion_Land_Survey_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_in_Saskatchewan?section=... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_in_Saskatchewan?section=4#Township_roads_and_range_roads https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_in_Saskatchewan?section=...