Most Amazing Roads

1. Australias Highway One gets the nod as the longest road in the world. It actually circumnavigates the whole of the vast country via a network of fully interconnected roads. Its total length is 9,024 miles, which makes it over 2,200 miles longer than its nearest rival, the Trans Siberian Highway.Over a million people drive on Highway One every day, with the road passing through every state in Australia, but theyd need a lot more than a day to driv .....

Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road Canada

2. Canadas Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road is the longest ice road in the world. Thats right, a road built entirely on ice. The road was first used in 1982 as a supply route to the mines in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Open from January to the end of March every year, the ice road is rebuilt annually. It is 353 miles long, 308 miles of which traverse frozen lakes. The first vehicle to use it each season measures the thickness of the ice w .....

M2 Southern Expressway

3. The M2 Southern Expressway in Adelaide, South Australia, allows only one direction of traffic flow at any one time. The road runs towards Adelaide city in the morning, swapping to a southbound flow in the afternoon. It has a total length of 13.05 miles. The two lane road eases congestion on the Main South Road in South Australia, and has proved a great success with commuters. .....

Aurland to Laerdal Norway

4. Not one for the claustrophobic, the tunnel between Aurland and L?rdal on the main road between Bergen and Oslo, Norway, measures 15.2 miles in length. The two lane L?rdal Tunnel was opened by King Harald of Norway on 27 November 2000. It cost a reported $113.1 million to construct and is officially the longest road tunnel in the world. .....

Dead Sea Israel

5. The worlds lowest road is along the Israeli shores of the Dead Sea at 393m below sea level. .....

North Yungas Road Bolivia

6. The most dangerous road in the world is a tough one to nail down but the Guinness World Records goes with the North Yungas Road in Bolivia and thats good enough for us.The North Yungas Road runs for 43 miles from La Paz to Coroico and up to 300 deaths occur annually along its length thats 6.9 fatalities per mile! For the majority of its stretch, the North Yungas is a single lane mud road but traffic travels in both directions and theres an unba .....

McMurdo South Pole Highway

7. The McMurdo South Pole Highway is a 900 mile road built in Antarctica from the McMurdo Station to the Amundsen Scott base at the South Pole and its the most southerly road in the world.It takes a caterpillar tracked vehicle around 40 days to pull fully loaded sleds of fuel and supplies along the route. Smaller vehicles can do this more quickly. The road is not paved, but made from flattened and graded ice and snow. The route offers a means of con .....

Magic Roundabout Swindon

8. Its a little tough to quantify the worlds most complicated roundabout but given the unique layout of Swindons .....

Ebenezer Place Wick

9. The worlds shortest street is Ebenezer Place in Wick, Scotland. Its only 2.06m long and basically comprises the front door of Mackays Hotel. The tiny street originated in 1883 when the owner of the hotel was instructed to paint a street name on its shortest side. It was officially declared a street in 1887.Ebenezer Place was only recognised as the worlds shortest street in 2006 when the Guinness Book of Records officially placed it ahead of 5.2m .....

Eyre Highway Australia

10. The straightest road in the world must also be a candidate for the most mind numbingly boring. The Eyre Highway is a 1,056 mile cut through the Australian outback designed primarily for use by gigantic road trains. One stretch on the Nullarbor Plain in Kalgoorlie is dead straight for 90 miles. This is not a place to run out of petrol. .....

Lombard Street San Francisco California

11. You might think that the twistiest road in the world would have keen drivers flocking to thread their sports cars and hot hatches down it but Lombard Street in San Francisco is far too twisty for that. Think of it as an alpine pass in miniature with a series of 8 hairpin bends in just 400 metres as the road descends a 27 degree gradient. The speed limit is just 5mph and this is definitely one to approach with caution. .....

Via Appia

12. The oldest known roads were laid in Egypt around 2,700BC but the oldest road still in use today is the Via Appia that runs between Rome and Brindisi in Italy. Its a comparative spring chicken, thought to date back to 312 BC.There are sections of the Via Appia where you can still see and travel on the original Roman paving, which is remarkably free of potholes. Britains councils could definitely learn something from the Romans. .....

Baldwin Street in Dunedin New Zealand

13. The steepest road in the world thats paved and can theoretically be driven up is Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand. The road climbs 1m for every 2.86m travelled horizontally. Its so steep that the tarmac runs off before it sets so the road had to be concreted. Special grooves are cut into it to help cars get a grip but youd still want a reasonable amount of oomph under your cars bonnet before attempting this one. .....

SpreuerhofstraBe in Reutlingen Germany

14. More of an alleyway than a road and certainly impassable to any vehicle that hasnt come off second best in a run in with a steamroller, Spreuerhofstra .....

Avenue 9 de Julio Buenos Aires Argentina

15. The capital cities of the world are bisected by some majestic boulevards but for sheer scale none can live with the Avenue 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires. This is the worlds widest road with over 100 metres of span, enough for nine lanes of traffic to flow in each direction. Our hearts go out to pedestrians trying to cross it, theyd probably need to stop halfway for a nap. .....

Burapha Withi Expressway Bangkok Thailand

16. If you like your bridges to be awe inspiring feats of engineering reaching out to conquer great natural obstacles, then the worlds longest road bridge may be a slight disappointment. It doesnt span a great canyon or raging body of water, it carries an elevated expressway into Bangkok, Thailand.The Burapha Withi Expressway (also known as the Bang Na Expressway) is 33.6 miles long but only crosses the Bang Pakong river for a fraction of that length .....

Jiaozhou Bay Bridge

17. Prepare to be amazed, bridge fans. This is the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in Chinas Shandong Province, the worlds longest road bridge over the sea. Its 25.8 miles long and connects Qingdao and Huangdao by carrying the road out across Jiaozhou Bay. Only 16.6 of its miles are over water, however, so this isnt actually the longest road bridge continuously over water in the world. .....

Lake Pontchartrain Causeway

18. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana is the longest bridge continuously over water in the world. Its comprised of two parallel bridges that take a road over Lake Pontchartrain, the longer of the two stretches for 23.87 miles (38.41 kilometres). .....

Akashi Kaikyo Bridge Japan

19. The Akashi Kaiky? Bridge links the city of Kobe on the mainland of Honshu to Iwaya on Awaji Island in Japan. It has the longest central span of any suspension bridge in the world at 1,991m and its held the record since it was completed in 1998. .....

Aizhai bridge

20. Its not a claim to fame that has a real ring to it but the Aizhai long span suspension bridge in Jishou, China, is the longest tunnel to tunnel suspension bridge in the world. Its the highest too in case youre interested. It has a span of 1,146m and at its highest point its 350 metres above the valley floor. Dont look down. .....

Nrburgring Nordschleife

21. Technically speaking the Nrburgring Nordschleife in Germanys Eifel mountains is a derestricted toll road. Its only open to the public in the rare windows when the worlds car manufacturers arent testing their top secret prototypes on it and theres no international motor races currently going on, but open to the public it sometimes is. That makes the 12.8 mile circuit the most expensive toll road in the world around USD $33 per lap. .....