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World's Strangest Roads

October 1st 2010 06:53

As seen in this article on Popular Mechanics, here are some of the most unique drives from around the world. View the full set of 18 strange roads here.
Comments are by Hani Mahmassani, a civil engineer who has led more than 100 transportation projects and is the director of Northwestern University's Transportation Center.

Highway 1 - Iceland

Highway 1 is better known as the Ring Road, because it forms a giant loop that circles the whole of Iceland. Much of the road has only one lane heading in each direction as it dices through fjords, cuts across the country's sub-Arctic desert and curves along the Atlantic coastline. The Ring Road is especially tourist-friendly, hitting most of the major Icelandic landmarks, though drivers should be prepared for unpaved stretches and antiquated bridges.

Yungas Road - Bolivia

This notorious road has earned the nickname Road of Death, thanks to the countless accidents that have occurred on it. Two-thousand-foot drops are not uncommon as the Yungas snakes through Bolivia's wilderness. "The history of these things, typically, is that you have a trail, like a donkey trail, that becomes the road," Mahmassani tells PM. "It's essentially the path of least resistance." Widening this road would be a massive project, both environmentally and financially, that would involve cutting and removing tons of mountainside.

Trollstigen - Norway

Eleven hairpin turns take drivers 2800 feet above sea level with an average grade of 9 percent. This scenic road is accented by the Stigfossen waterfall, which runs down the side of the mountain and is crossed by a small bridge on the way toward the road's apex. Sections of the pass were cut directly into the face of the mountain during the 1930s. The pass tends to open in late May and sometimes closes through June because of the region's harsh winters.

Canton Avenue - Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh's Department of Public Works confirms that this short road has a 37 percent grade, which means that it ascends 37 feet in elevation for every 100 horizontal feet it travels. Fortunately, for pedestrians, city planners included a flight of steps along the side of the road. "You wouldn't specify this road as a modern design; these usually exist for historical reasons," Mahmassani says. Canton Avenue has an ongoing feud with New Zealand's Baldwin Street (which unconfirmed reports claim has a grade anywhere between 35 and 38 percent) for being the world's steepest drivable street.

Lombard Street - San Francisco

San Francisco's most recognizable street originally had a 27 percent grade, making it too steep for the first automobiles to conquer. In 1922, the eight curves were added, reducing the grade to 16 percent. Lombard Street was a two-way road until 1939.

World's Strangest Roads

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