What stretch of highway is the longest straightaway?
I'd say maybe I 80 west of Salt Lake City.
Maybe I 94 in North Dakota?
I'll throw in the 40+ miles of MN 1 between MN 89 and Thief River Falls.
Up in the UP you have the famed Seney Stretch on M-28, which I think is about 25 miles.
I-41/94 in Racine and Kenosha counties - 24 miles
Quote from: TheHighwayMan394I'll throw in the 40+ miles of MN 1 between MN 89 and Thief River Falls.
Technically, because of survey errors and whatnot, you have a few slight bends in Pennington County, but I'd count 34 miles along MN 1 before such bends become noticeable.
All the above definitely beats the straightest stretch I have been on, US-1 between Homestead and Key Largo. From the curve just south of Card Sound Rd to that slight bend just south of SeaHunter Marina it clocks in at 14.0 miles.
I-80 in Nebraska between Lincoln and Grand Island. That's about a 60-mile long straightaway. Ugh.
NV 160 has an 11-mile straight section that Koenigsegg recently used to break the fastest production car record.
http://www.pvtimes.com/sports/swedish-car-company-coming-pahrump-break-speed-record
Obviously these don't compare to some of the ones out west, but in Virginia some that come to mind are:
1. US-50 between Lenah and I-66(14 miles)
2. A couple of 10-mile stretches on US-460 between I-295 and US-58
Again, this is no comparison to any of the West/Midwest examples above, but the Pennsylvania Turnpike has a pair of straightaways (roughly 6 + 12 twelve miles) west of Carlisle with only a slight bend connecting the two. It was an image of this section that was used on a Goodrich tire ad with the caption: "You have to slow down to 90 for the curves."
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pahighways.com%2Fgraphics%2Fpictures%2FPATPKpicture26.jpg&hash=02f01c911185684e2aa0ae3ebebb14f0a97d5ce3)
My impression is that this was an example of the Turnpike designers taking a new concept ("the highway that stops for nothing" ) and taking it to its logical extreme. Kind of like the GM Futurama models that depict arrow straight an freeway bridging over a deep valley and then plowing straight into the side of mountain–as if the highway was a bullet trajectory.
I suspect that if the Turnpike was designed a decade or two later, this straightaways wouldn't exist.
Left out I 5 from south of Tracy to the Grapevine. Pretty straight, and boring.
I-40 east of Cline's Corners to just west of Santa Rosa, in particular from mile marker 230 to 263.
US 19 & 27 in Taylor County, FL.
US 1 in St. John's and Duval County from St. Augustine to the area around the Avenues Mall is 25 miles with only one curve.
FL 710 from Riveria Beach, FL to Okeechobee, FL is 50 miles straight hence the name Beeline Highway.
Alligator Alley is a mention as its pretty much straight.
US 27 south of South Bay in Florida.
FL 80 & US 98 for several miles in Palm Beach County even with 23 mile bend.
Quote from: froggie on November 11, 2017, 12:44:03 PM
Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on November 11, 2017, 10:48:10 AMI'll throw in the 40+ miles of MN 1 between MN 89 and Thief River Falls.
Technically, because of survey errors and whatnot, you have a few slight bends in Pennington County, but I'd count 34 miles along MN 1 before such bends become noticeable.
Well, if we're going to be technical, there is no perfectly straight highway due to the curvature of the Earth. :spin:
Not sure how perfect the straightness is but US 31 north of Indianapolis has a roughly 20-mile long stretch between SR 38 and SR 931 that is a pretty straight north-south routing. I want to say that there is a part north of Peru and US 24 that's also straight for at least a few miles.
I can also think of US 40 east of Indianapolis as being pretty straight. Straight in Downtown Indy the road that is Washington Street and later US 40 seems pretty straight all the way eastward across Hancock County to Knightstown. Hell with the exception of crossings over waterways most of that highway east to Richmond is straight.
Quote from: OCGuy81 on November 11, 2017, 02:22:41 PM
Left out I 5 from south of Tracy to the Grapevine. Pretty straight, and boring.
Not straight. Longest segment is about 20 miles.
I-5 between Coburg and Albany is the straightest segment of the highway at 35.
Quote from: OCGuy81 on November 11, 2017, 10:41:53 AM
I'd say maybe I 80 west of Salt Lake City.
First place I thought of. According to Google, it's
43 miles (from exit 4 to a few miles past exit 41). It's so straight it gets boring fast, and there are even lots of signs with stuff like "Drowsy Drivers Pull Over" . That said, it's a drive I think everyone has to do at least once in their lives.
Quote from: MNHighwayMan on November 11, 2017, 08:57:03 PM
Quote from: froggie on November 11, 2017, 12:44:03 PM
Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on November 11, 2017, 10:48:10 AMI'll throw in the 40+ miles of MN 1 between MN 89 and Thief River Falls.
Technically, because of survey errors and whatnot, you have a few slight bends in Pennington County, but I'd count 34 miles along MN 1 before such bends become noticeable.
Well, if we're going to be technical, there is no perfectly straight highway due to the curvature of the Earth. :spin:
But the earth is flat according to several NBA stars. ;)
A portion of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Cumberland County, while hilly, is also pretty straight without curves. This is in between Blue Mountain and Carlisle.
I-40 in New Mexico (ex-US 66) has a stretch that goes down into a valley then out again, about 20 miles long.
Quote from: Bickendan on November 11, 2017, 09:40:56 PM
Quote from: OCGuy81 on November 11, 2017, 02:22:41 PM
Left out I 5 from south of Tracy to the Grapevine. Pretty straight, and boring.
Not straight. Longest segment is about 20 miles.
I-5 between Coburg and Albany is the straightest segment of the highway at 35.
.. but I-5 from CASR-99 to the junction with I-580 (something like 400+ km) has no turns with advisory speeds below the 70 MPH two-axle limit. That would be one definition of straightness.
As far as true tangent lines are concerned, I believe that there is a public road in Germany with no posted speed limit that has a 10 km arrow-straight pancake-flat stretch on which a professional driver managed to get to over 400 km/h (but JUST over like 408). I think that is was early on a Sunday morning before trucks were allowed on the road (I don't know if trucks are allowed on autobahnen on Sundays at all).
There is a section of I-15 in eastern California that has a fair downgrade with almost 100 km line of sight (all of the way into Nevada) and is nearly straight. If you want to know how fast your car can go or how fast you are willing to drive, wait for the CHP and the Southern California traffic all to get stopped or occupied by an accident further west and head out there. When it happened to me, I was getting passed at 150 km/h.
I know the Seney stretch of M-28 is Michigan's longest straight highway, it's about 25 miles but seems longer. I think it's one of the longest straight stretches east of the Mississippi.
There's a stretch of US 97 in Oregon between Kirk, north of Chiloquin, and the OR 138 junction, that is dead-straight and just under 24 miles long. It's a bit eerie driving through there because it's bounded by forests on both sides (pine logging "plantations")that have been cut back to give about a 100-foot wide easement, with the highway down the middle. One needs to watch their speed through there; it's easy to top 80-85 on that segment of road without realizing you're going that fast (unless you come up on a log truck, which is a not uncommon occurrence). Northbound it looks as if the road goes on forever; SB the hills at the end of the tangent can be seen. Always a fun drive!
Similar distance to I-80 in Utah... 43 miles from Nuevo Laredo to the libre/cuota split Carr. Fed. 85 (https://goo.gl/maps/BZfDEEKFGhF2).
Quote from: keithvh on November 11, 2017, 01:14:03 PM
I-80 in Nebraska between Lincoln and Grand Island. That's about a 60-mile long straightaway. Ugh.
Almost but not quite straight.
https://goo.gl/maps/vRyQxZBqpyA2 (https://goo.gl/maps/vRyQxZBqpyA2)
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dangerousroads.org%2Fimages%2Fstories%2F_Roads091%2Feyre00.jpg&hash=2e4e1edaa61b7c58c07e768c9fc1856248948b73)
Elsewhere in Oz....
(https://i.redd.it/hzmjas59b8bz.jpg)
I've been to the three longest straights in my region this year. However I haven't done all of one of them (but I have done it previously). None of them are as long as those posted here, the longest one being only 11 miles long.
Quote from: kphoger on November 14, 2017, 03:48:01 PM
Similar distance to I-80 in Utah... 43 miles from Nuevo Laredo to the libre/cuota split Carr. Fed. 85 (https://goo.gl/maps/BZfDEEKFGhF2).
I measured it to be 1.5 miles longer, to a roundabout in Nuevo Laredo.
Quote from: kphoger on November 14, 2017, 03:50:50 PM
Quote from: keithvh on November 11, 2017, 01:14:03 PM
I-80 in Nebraska between Lincoln and Grand Island. That's about a 60-mile long straightaway. Ugh.
Almost but not quite straight. https://goo.gl/maps/vRyQxZBqpyA2 (https://goo.gl/maps/vRyQxZBqpyA2)
Chris claimed to have found a 75 mile straight there, but I debunked that.
Quote from: roadman65 on November 11, 2017, 03:02:05 PM
US 19 & 27 in Taylor County, FL.
US 1 in St. John's and Duval County from St. Augustine to the area around the Avenues Mall is 25 miles with only one curve.
FL 710 from Riveria Beach, FL to Okeechobee, FL is 50 miles straight hence the name Beeline Highway.
Alligator Alley is a mention as its pretty much straight.
US 27 south of South Bay in Florida.
FL 80 & US 98 for several miles in Palm Beach County even with 23 mile bend.
You forgot the Beachline between OIA and the SR 407 split in Brevard County? Bad Roadman65, bad! No donut! :pan: :-D
At 123 miles, North Dakota 46 is the longest straight road I can find in the United States.
Quote from: Flint1979 on November 14, 2017, 07:58:30 PM
At 123 miles, North Dakota 46 is the longest straight road I can find in the United States.
More like 42 miles.
Quote from: bugo on November 14, 2017, 09:37:13 PM
Quote from: Flint1979 on November 14, 2017, 07:58:30 PM
At 123 miles, North Dakota 46 is the longest straight road I can find in the United States.
More like 42 miles.
Yep. The longest section without curves is
just under 43 miles long (https://goo.gl/maps/7spcqo9YbM92). The Wikipedia article is lying, and the article it cites as its source even says:
Quote from: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11799Every "straight" road shifts a little bit here and there, bending just a bit around a rock or a tree or making an adjustment to cross a bridge. So does Hwy 46.
Not to mention the fact that ND-46 is only 121 miles long, so 123 miles of it being without curves is a tad impossible.
Quote from: CNGL-Leudimin on November 14, 2017, 05:25:11 PMQuote from: kphoger on November 14, 2017, 03:50:50 PMQuote from: keithvh on November 11, 2017, 01:14:03 PMI-80 in Nebraska between Lincoln and Grand Island. That's about a 60-mile long straightaway. Ugh.
Almost but not quite straight. https://goo.gl/maps/vRyQxZBqpyA2 (https://goo.gl/maps/vRyQxZBqpyA2)
Chris claimed to have found a 75 mile straight there, but I debunked that.
I-80 through Nebraska is a notoriously monotonous drive, but on casual inspection the longest uninterrupted length of apparent tangent alignment I see is between (roughly) milepost 322 and milepost 334, a distance of about 12 miles.
Between the I-76 split (Exit 102) and Grand Island (Exit 314), I-80 is actually a river-follower, though the stream in question is the Platte River, with a wide and shallow alluvial floodplain. West of there, the longest length of apparent true tangent alignment runs west about 12 miles from a point just east of the Lodgepole exit (Exit 76).
Between Grand Island and Lincoln, a high percentage of I-80 is on tangent alignment and the roadway centerline hardly varies from being a half mile north of the section line to the south (typical alignment along the back edges of adjacent quarter-sections, to minimize right-of-way acquisition costs by eliminating the need to condemn large swathes of land for the access rights; I-70 in Kansas is similar). However, the individual lengths of tangent are short because they are divided by lengths of very high-radius curve, each curve radius being probably on the order of 100,000 feet.
I-80 is actually fairly curvy from just west of Lincoln east clear to the Missouri River.
Bottom line: the longest tangents I-80 can claim in Nebraska are 12 miles in length at most, which is precisely what one would expect from good alignment design for a rural freeway in level to rolling terrain. However, it was built perhaps a bit too early to fully exploit advanced thinking in alignment design, which calls for tangent length to decrease across the board (ideally to the extent that there are no tangents at all) and for the line of the road, when viewed from the driver's perspective, to flow smoothly to the horizon in a way that discourages highway hypnosis.
This section isn't perfectly straight, obviously, but I'd say the most "straight" in terms of monotonous driving that I've driven is US 24 from Peoria, IL, to Kentland, IN. Approximately 120 miles of two-lane driving with few hills and lots of corn fields.
Quote from: Flint1979 on November 13, 2017, 02:17:46 AM
I know the Seney stretch of M-28 is Michigan's longest straight highway, it's about 25 miles but seems longer. I think it's one of the longest straight stretches east of the Mississippi.
My brother (I was in the passenger seat) drove this today and it certainly is a long stretch of straight highway! I noticed a few stretches where a river/creek seemed to be surprisingly straight beside the highway on the north side. I don't see that on Google Maps though...
Anyway, here are two photos I took:
(https://i.imgur.com/L2Figdvl.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/pT1uonJl.jpg)
Some other long straight stretches in Michigan:
US-31 from north of Scottville to Hoague Rd near Free Soil (used to be longer when US-31 went into Scottville)
M-55 from Lake City to Houghton Lake
M-57 and M-46 are pretty much ruler straight through Gratiot County
Quote from: ftballfan on November 19, 2017, 11:26:42 PM
Some other long straight stretches in Michigan:
US-31 from north of Scottville to Hoague Rd near Free Soil (used to be longer when US-31 went into Scottville)
M-55 from Lake City to Houghton Lake
M-57 and M-46 are pretty much ruler straight through Gratiot County
M-46 really has very few curves. From the eastern terminus to Washburn Road a stretch of 46 miles I can't find where it curves once. It curves in Saginaw a couple times but recaptures it's allignment on both sides of the Saginaw River going east and west out of Saginaw. Then other than the few curves between Vestaburg and Edmore it doesn't curve again until the M-66 multiplex. Looking at M-46 I'm confused on why the Seney Stretch would be considered the longest stretch of straight highway in the state.
Quote from: Flint1979 on November 21, 2017, 09:11:59 PMM-46 really has very few curves. From the eastern terminus to Washburn Road a stretch of 46 miles I can't find where it curves once.
I can. There is a fairly high-radius curve between Byington Rd. and Lee Hill Rd. that is visible in StreetView. There also appears to be another of higher radius around Hurds Corner Rd. Even the straight stretch just west of US 127 has a slight curve around Luce Rd.
Quote from: Flint1979 on November 21, 2017, 09:11:59 PMLooking at M-46 I'm confused on why the Seney Stretch would be considered the longest stretch of straight highway in the state.
The problem with Google Maps, which I assume is what you are using to check straightness, is that it is better suited for exclusion, not confirmation. It requires going to the original construction plans to confirm surveyors' intent to lay out the roadway baseline as a perfect tangent. It is typically engineers within the state DOT and perhaps some long-established contractors that have ready access to old construction plans, so these alignment feature maximum/minimum claims often start as scuttlebutt conversation among agency old-timers that seeps into the hobby. "I remember . . .," they say as they sit around the campfire or whatever, and of course they never pull out the plans so one can actually confirm it in black and white.
This said, if "Seney Stretch" means the length of M-28 between Shingleton and Seney, I suspect it is considered "longest straight" because it is all true tangent alignment, with no curvature of the kind that can be found with careful manipulation of Google Maps zoom level on the parts of M-46 that appear straight on casual inspection. Confirmation would, of course, depend on access to the original M-28 construction plans. (I really wish Michigan DOT would put its as-builts on open public access; obtaining construction plans free through FOI can be done but is a cross between roulette and keyhole surgery.)
SR 4 in Ohio is pretty much straight on from Sandusky to Chatfield, approximately 37 miles.
Quote from: csw on December 23, 2017, 11:27:27 AM
SR 4 in Ohio is pretty much straight on from Sandusky to Chatfield, approximately 37 miles.
I'm going with 29 miles on this one, from Sandusky to Caroline.
It curves slightly at Caroline. (https://goo.gl/maps/NGCs22DxPhy)
CA 167 has about a 12 mile straight section, also has the lowest AADT in California.
Oregon I 84 has a pretty strait section from mp 165 to mp 194, the second longest in Oregon.
One of Washington's longest: I 90 mp 151 to 175.
Quote from: Big John on November 11, 2017, 12:30:17 PM
I-41/94 in Racine and Kenosha counties - 24 miles
Although built on a section line, the actual I-41/94 roadway curves around quite a bit within its ROW.
One of the longest true 'tangents' in Wisconsin is WI 173 from just north of WI 21 (Valley Junction) to WI 80 (Babcock) - built on an abandoned railroad ROW, it is about 22 m/35.5 km dead straight and level.
I-39 is also dead straight between WI 73 (interchange 136) at Plainfield and just south of US 10 (interchange 158) in Stevens Point.
How long are the longest true tangents on WI 29 west of Wausau and on WI 57 between I-43 just north of Saukville and WI 32 near Elkhart Lake?
Mike
This isn't going to be any kind of record holder, but I've always been amazed by how straight US136 is in central Illinois. From Rantoul west to central Mason County, it doesn't have any significant curves whatsoever. This is a distance of about 84 miles.