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I thought American roads were designed to handle vehicles up to 8 feet, 6 inches wide? Anything wider requires a "wide load" permit.
Thruways, fine, they are always wide. So are major roads..... However, if you are in the country, you find lots of small roads. My cousin lives near Schenectady and there are many roads with 1 land underpasses! I wouldn't consider the vehicle past 6 feet ( like a small delivery van) to go thru safely. We have many rural roads this end of the state just as narrow
This refers to the small town of Berlin, near Ocean City Maryland.
There are very narrow roads all over rural West Virginia -- so narrow that when encountering oncoming traffic, one has to pull over to the shoulder to let them pass.
The crookedest street in the USA is either Lombard Street in San Francisco, or a certain other street in Burlington Iowa.
there's actually a more crooked street in SF than Lombard (Vermont street), it's just that nobody knows about it because it's not in a touristy area:
Are those really considered streets? or alleys? Are they open to through traffic and if so what happens when two cars approach from opposite directions?
Are those really considered streets? or alleys? Are they open to through traffic and if so what happens when two cars approach from opposite directions?
They are streets, some do not allow for cars now and as are most streets in Philly the ones that do are one-way streets. There are actually many streets like these in the city mostly concentrated in the older sections. these areas were built well before the car and were designed for horses and buggies.
This video gives some perspective on these little streets, this area is basically a bunch of streets and alleys between Walnut and Locust right in center city.
A good friend of mine lives on Quince St (featured in much of this video)
Having experienced roads in both countries, I don't think narrow roads in the US are anywhere near as common as they are in the UK. What shocks me as well is the lack of safety or organization with the UK's narrow country roads - generally I find in the US, if a road is too narrow for more than one car, it will be designated and marked as a one-way road. In the UK, it's like "drive at your own risk" - not only does traffic go both ways for a road that's clearly not wide enough for 2 cars but one side of the road could be a dangerous drop off with NO guard rail. There'd be law suits all over the place if this were in the US.
Thanks to all v intresting-anyone got any Google street Views of USA narrow roads?
PA2UK-In the Uk even the biggest cities you are barely a few miles/minutes away from roads you describe-are the Usa narrow roads considerably away from major cities?
There are defintiely narrow roads in the USA. Driving down south once I decided to take the "scenic route" and traveled up something called the Blue Ridge Parkway in NC and VA.
It was w/o doubt the most hair-raising white-knuckled will-I-die-or-will-I-live drive I have ever had. The scenery is beautiful, but the road is incredibly narrow, windy, has no shoulders, and goes through narrow and dark tunnels in the mountains. To make this experience even better, there was a heavy fog as night fell. And mile to go before I could find a turnoff leading back down to the Interstate.
The Blude Ridge Parkway was builit, I understand, as a Depression era project. I guess they were trying to keep the number of hungry down by ensuring that they drove off the side of a mountain!
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