cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17221249
Progress: the Katy Freeway in Houston, Texas, spans across 26 lanes making it the worlds widest. The freeway is broken down in to 12 main lanes (six in each direction), eight feeder lanes.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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The picture of the "Chinese 50 lane road" was an internet hoax. It wasn't a road. It is a toll gate, and it also only has 25 lanes.
The Katy freeway that OP posted has 26 lanes and is considered the "largest" road. The picture doesn't really show it that well, and I'm also not sure if the feeder roads ought to count. It "only" has 6 ordinary lanes in both directions but a lot of entryways, exits and other designated lanes.
According to Guinness Book of Records, the widest road is in Brazil and is 250 meters wide. However this is also just a technicality, because it is also a 6 lane road with a really really wide median strip.
If you're counting feeder roads, shouldn't toll gates get counted too? Even so, while looking up the widest road in Brazil that you mention later, I came across an article that explained that OP is actually wrong and that the Katy freeway maxes out at 13 lanes. The only way you get close to 26 lanes is if you also count the feeder/access/frontage roads. So the Chinese highway is still wider even if you don't count the toll gate (assuming you aren't counting access roads, though it might still be wider even if you count access roads).
I live in Texas and have been on the Katy freeway before. It's honestly extremely wide and makes you feel like you're surrounded by pavement.
Personally, I think access roads shouldn't be counted because iirc they're required by law (Texas law supposedly states that anyone with land immediately next to a highway must be able to access said highway) and treated like normal streets.
Like, on the one hand, Texas highways almost always have a road with at least one or two lanes running parallel on both sides that on/off-ramps connect to, so they should be counted as part of the highway, right?
On the other hand, they're treated as normal city streets, have a lower speed limit, can have traffic lights, have parking lot entrances/exits, and so forth; so they're not really part of the highway. It's not like you could bulldoze the access roads without potentially making a lot of homes and/or businesses completely inaccessible.
I didn't bring that up though, because I didn't want to risk someone getting mad because I was "minimizing the fuck cars energy" or something.
That makes me wonder if we should be counting lanes, actual width, or a ratio between the two. Imo a 250m wide, 6 lane road is significantly worse than a 169m wide, 26 lane road (Google says the Katy freeway is 169m wide at its widest). Technically the 6 lane road is greener because there's probably not as much vehicle pollution, but that's a fuckton of wasted space.
I feel like inefficiency should be the real target, but that doesn't make for good headlines or thread titles. Imagine titling a thread, "the Katy freeway is the world's least space efficient highway due to being X-wide with an A:B width:lane ratio" vs "the Katy freeway is the world's widest highway with 26 lanes". The latter is a lot easier to visualize than the former.