Comment by fwlr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fwlr | Hacker News Reader

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As an Australian who visited Iceland and drove a lot there, I was very impressed with Iceland’s roads. They face some similar challenges to Australia: geographic distribution requires a lot of road for not many people. (https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Transport/Hi... Iceland has ~45km of highway per 1k people, Australia has ~43km of highway per 1k. Canada is the only other country above 40km/1k people. America is representative of the top 10% at 16th with ~23km/1k, 80% of countries have less than 10km/1k, and 50% of countries have less than 5km/1k. The bottom extreme of 1km/1k or less is also interesting - you see expected places like Singapore and Hong Kong but also oddities like Egypt and China. I would be curious to get reports from Canadians and Estonians on their opinions of their country’s roads.)

Of course, Iceland has added constraints of deep freeze / unfreeze cycle and heavy snowfall. They performed admirably well. I particularly enjoyed their solution to the river crossing issue - Iceland has a ‘ring road’ that aims to connect essentially the entire country, and this road has to cross many rivers. Like, SO many rivers, it feels like once every dozen kilometers or something. Their efficient solution was one-lane bridges - sometimes you have to wait for oncoming traffic to vacate the bridge before you can cross.

>I would be curious to get reports from Canadians and Estonians on their opinions of their country’s roads

Canadian checking in.

Having driven all over the eastern half our country and a few places in the western half as well as much of the eastern half of America I much prefer Canada's.

Small things like how quickly it seems roadkill is cleaned up here as opposed to America. There are still many places where we do not have divided highway and it's just a single lane in each direction but that is slowly and steadily being changed out to a divided 2/3 lanes in each direction setup.

There is construction and maintence delays (looking at you quebec) but overall things work pretty well.

Counter that to places in America (looking at you Michigan) where driving can feel like it's going to shake the nuts off your car, and then you cross a border into say Ohio and everything is back to normal :)

>There are still many places where we do not have divided highway and it's just a single lane in each direction but that is slowly and steadily being changed out to a divided 2/3 lanes in each direction setup.

Does this include the TCH? The average American who sees it on a map (or the average Ontarian who never leaves the Windsor-Quebec City belt) assumes that it's like a US interstate, as opposed to in many places traffic lights, private driveways opening onto it, and (as you say) one lane in each direction.

>Having driven all over the eastern half our country and a few places in the western half as well as much of the eastern half of America I much prefer Canada's.

I have heard that Canada's portion of the Alaska Highway is terrible compared to the US portion, presumably because the US portion is held to Interstate standards.

>Counter that to places in America (looking at you Michigan) where driving can feel like it's going to shake the nuts off your car, and then you cross a border into say Ohio and everything is back to normal

Roads in Canada are 100% provincial matters (which is why the TCH isn't like Interstates). I would be surprised if there isn't a Canadian province that is Michigan's equivalent compared to its peers.

In my limited experience, Michigan has no peers. It's a uniquely brutal place to drive.

Not all of the Alcan is bad, but it's worse the further north you get. Alaskan roads are generally not built to Interstate standards, mostly being two-lane undivided highways. In general the US side is probably marginally better but neither side stands out as being particularly good; road maintenance at those latitudes is challenging.

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