When I was in college at Eastern New Mexico, which is about 45 minutes west of Amarillo Texas, a couple friends, both from New England, had the bright idea of driving down to the gulf over a 4 day weekend.
I cautioned them against the idea, trying to explain Texas was bigger than they could imagine. Three hours into the trip we got a motel room in some hole in the wall town and went back to school the next morning.
What? It takes 24 hours to drive from the Canadian border to Mexico border. Texas is about 770 miles at its widest, that’s a breezy 10-12 hour drive doing the speed limit or just over.
The only place I’ve driven for multiple hours that was worse than Texas was Nevada. Even rural Indiana is a huge upgrade and that place stinks from soy bean processing (I think?)
Michigan and California are incredible.
Looking at Saskatchewan…I dunno man, looks really pretty to me!
Compared to the other provinces, it’s just flat farm fields. When the rapeseed (canola) is blooming it can look pretty, but it’s just yellow flowers for HOURS, no variety.
Edit, oh and for six months it’s white with snow, and the highway is dead straight, it’s hard to stay awake for the six hours.
Nope, in America through-traffic goes right through the city center. Fortunately, many cities have innovated to solve this problem by bulldozing their city centers to build more stroads
That’s not true in many parts of the country. It’s very much a mixed bag. Look at San Antonio, 410 goes around the city and connects the various highways so you don’t need to go through the city center to drive past the city. In Seattle, 405 was intended to do that for Seattle to avoid 15, but then Bellevue got huge. In SLC, we have 215.
Beltroutes are common across the country and are designed to solve exactly this problem.
Stroads are a different problem unconnected to highways going through cities. In fact, they’re often the old highways that went through town and became a stroad when the highway was built. We then built more of them because people liked driving cars to their destination instead of walking or taking transit.
The best possible bypass won’t solve the stroad problem or congestion in the city center. What we need is a complete redesign of what a city center means, which I think should be:
exits for a city only at the edges, and no reasonable way to cut through the city
tons of free parking at the edge of cities and cheap or free transit from the edge to the city center
fantastic mass transit inside of cities
car free zone in downtown, so the only way to get there is transit or walking/cycling
If we can do that, we can rip out stroads to make room for more density in attractions. Keep some roads for trucks to make deliveries and whatnot, and convert the rest to walkable streets.
When I was in college at Eastern New Mexico, which is about 45 minutes west of Amarillo Texas, a couple friends, both from New England, had the bright idea of driving down to the gulf over a 4 day weekend.
I cautioned them against the idea, trying to explain Texas was bigger than they could imagine. Three hours into the trip we got a motel room in some hole in the wall town and went back to school the next morning.
What? It takes 24 hours to drive from the Canadian border to Mexico border. Texas is about 770 miles at its widest, that’s a breezy 10-12 hour drive doing the speed limit or just over.
Yeah so nearly half their weekend driving…through Texas. One of the most boring places to drive through.
24 hours out of 96. I’ve done worse.
And it can’t be worse than Saskatchewan.
The only place I’ve driven for multiple hours that was worse than Texas was Nevada. Even rural Indiana is a huge upgrade and that place stinks from soy bean processing (I think?)
Michigan and California are incredible.
Looking at Saskatchewan…I dunno man, looks really pretty to me!
Northern Nevada sucks, but southern Nevada near Vegas is fine since it has cool rock structures and whatnot, provided you avoid rush hour.
I hate most of California because traffic is so awful, but north of SF is pretty.
Compared to the other provinces, it’s just flat farm fields. When the rapeseed (canola) is blooming it can look pretty, but it’s just yellow flowers for HOURS, no variety.
Edit, oh and for six months it’s white with snow, and the highway is dead straight, it’s hard to stay awake for the six hours.
Sounds like huge swaths of the Midwest US. My friend got into a wreck for the same reason you described (thankfully no one was hurt)
You’re assuming no traffic in major cities. I’ve gone from close to the Louisiana border to new Mexico and it took about 16 hours.
Do most cities not have bypasses? In Canada even most small towns have a bypass so you avoid the traffic lights.
It’s mostly for the semi traffic, the stopping and stopping ruins the roads, so they have a highway going around town to avoid that.
Nope, in America through-traffic goes right through the city center. Fortunately, many cities have innovated to solve this problem by bulldozing their city centers to build more stroads
That’s not true in many parts of the country. It’s very much a mixed bag. Look at San Antonio, 410 goes around the city and connects the various highways so you don’t need to go through the city center to drive past the city. In Seattle, 405 was intended to do that for Seattle to avoid 15, but then Bellevue got huge. In SLC, we have 215.
Beltroutes are common across the country and are designed to solve exactly this problem.
Stroads are a different problem unconnected to highways going through cities. In fact, they’re often the old highways that went through town and became a stroad when the highway was built. We then built more of them because people liked driving cars to their destination instead of walking or taking transit.
The best possible bypass won’t solve the stroad problem or congestion in the city center. What we need is a complete redesign of what a city center means, which I think should be:
If we can do that, we can rip out stroads to make room for more density in attractions. Keep some roads for trucks to make deliveries and whatnot, and convert the rest to walkable streets.