Not straight enough for the OP’s purposes. I used to live on it, out east of 84th street, and it does bend slightly in places (not to mention that it’s hilly, and of course there’s the viaduct etc etc)
I seem to remember this intergalatic highway being built by the Vogons intersecting earth.
North-south ends to suffer from the curvaure of the earth. The border between Manitoba and Saskatchewan looks ramrod straight but actually jogs frequently, as I recall, because the nice square township lines no longer fit as the earth “gets narrower towards the top”. So a lot of survey-defined “straight lines” in the NS direction would not be perfectly linear, as the local center for Universal Transverse Mercator mapping changes.
Similarly, the township streets north of Toronto jog several dozen feet at Steeles Ave., I was told it was for the same reason.
Technically any road following a 'straight line" along a latitude would have a bow in it unless it was along the equator… but this is nitpicking too.
My cursory scan of it looks pretty good from the river to near York, frankly. I don’t think a traffic circle invalidates it. Otherwise, in-city the right of way was straight, and local engineers just did a little wobble when two lanes went to 4 lanes, etc. Acceptable to the Mercotan’s Mercator!
And it’s also not even in the neighbourhood of being strait. Definitely not in the vertical plane and I doubt about it being strait in the horizontal plane as well.
I was going to post this, too. I have some hazy memory of a rule like that that they tried to build in to the design of the original interstate highways. Or was that just an urban/suburban/rural myth?
Known as “The Gun-Barrel”. It is built over an old railroad, which was the longest straight section of track in the US. You can see on the google map that the old railroad bed continues straight north for several more miles. I think the straight track was over 50 miles.
Pretty danged straight when I have driven it. The very small wanders are due to some turn lanes they have added over the years, where the road passes through “towns” (which are only just wide spots in the road, literally) When it was strictly two-lane, it was well over 42 miles of dead straight. I have driven it at night a few times, and it is a witch to judge how far away oncoming cars are, because you see the headlights coming at you for like 10 minutes or more, slowly getting brighter.
But it’s in the neighborhood of a strait, that should count for something.
I just drove on Hwy 57 the other day and it immediately came to mind when I read the thread topic. I think Cedar Valley has the best string cheese I’ve ever tried.
Are you thinking of the myth that “one out of every five miles on an interstate needs to be perfectly straight so that planes can land on it in an emergency”?
But was it the straightest, longest string cheese you’ve ever tried?
Cedar Valley is a great cheese clearinghouse. I love their variety. 4 year old swiss is my fave find there, so hard to get decent aged swiss these days…
In that case, you might enjoy Sask. Rd. 33 from Richardson (near Regina) south east to past Stoughton.
Plus, the whole not straight thing kinda lets it down :smack:
The Chunnel is only 31 miles long and curves to avoid the Fosse Dangeard trench.
Highway 64 from Delhart TX (upper panhandle) to just outside Liberal, KS. 106 miles.
^No, there are some big meanders in Guymon and other towns. Even the railroad it parallels isn’t perfectly straight.
(My definition, which I think would be shared by the OP, is that Paul Bunyan could snap a chalkline down the center, without it leaving the paved surface.)
The longest straight road in the UK is, unsurprisingly a former Roman road - the A15, which follows the course of Ermine Street. Supposedly it is straight for 15 miles, but it looks to me like there are a fair few wiggles. (Street View evidence of one such bend, which is actually quite a scary view as it gives the impression that the Street View driver is overtaking in the path of a large oncoming truck! Hopefully this is the view from the back of the car…)
There’s a 5-mile dead-straight stretch of the A30 that I drive along frequently, which isn’t very impressive in terms of length but is a good illustration of the Roman attitude to road-building - it goes arrow straight completely ignoring the fairly hilly terrain, unlike the Lincolnshire example above which is in very flat country.
I’m amazed at the number of Dopers driving on Hwy 57. I’m going to put up a sign by Cedar Valley saying “August West’s house 6.7 miles <----”
ETA: Weyauwega Star Dairy has the best string cheese.
significant curve in Guymon.
Oops, I wasn’t the first to notice this.
Also in Texahoma.
The longest straight roads I found in the United States are two separate sections of the same highway in the Oklahoma Panhandle.
From Boise City to just west of Guymon, Highway 412 runs razor’s-edge straight for 47.7 miles.
And as if that wasn’t enough, when Highway 412 resumes its straight and narrow ways 24 miles to the east, it proceeds to run perfectly straight through the farmlands of western Oklahoma from Hardesty to just east of Slapout for another 65.7 miles.
And just to be crystal clear: these roads are absolutely straight - no slight curves or bends at all.
I virtually eyeballed the entire route via Google Earth to confirm the road was as straight as it initially appeared. It was; not a single deviation from the center line on either section to be found.
So, unless someone locates a longer perfectly straight road, I believe the 65.7 mile section of Oklahoma’s U.S. Highway 412 should be named the Longest Straight Road in the United States.