I was driving to my Dad’s the other day, and I got to thinking, how many miles of paved road are there in the United States? How much is that in comparison to the rest of the world?
I have heard important people say in the past that if UK roads were straightened into one - it would go round the world about 20 times.
So to use an already very vague estimate as a guide to estimate another country - I’d say American roads would go round the world 200 times.
Per the World Factbook 2001, published by the CIA, the United States has 3,732,757 km of paved highways (total: 6,348,227). The figure for the world is listed as “NA,” which I assume (but haven’t checked) is due to the fact that some countries must individually be “not available.”
Sorry, that should be 2,319,428 miles for U.S. paved highways.
I was watching The History Chennel last night and they had a show on “The Paving of America”. In a pre-commercial blurb they said “There are 4 million miles of road in the United States – half of which are paved.” So that jibes with KneadToKnow’s figure.
BTW: They usually play the episodes several times during the week, so you may be able to catch it. (You can tell that I have no life.)