Borne of necessity, tourist creations, or mutations of evolution, the world is filled with unique roadways. Popular Mechanics has rounded up the “World’s 18 Strangest Roadways” in a fascinating list. I find their website incredibly frustrating to navigate and tedious to click through, but a number of the international highlights were new to me.

I drove the Hana Highway (above) this spring and I’m sure, like many of the roads on this list, it’s one you will only drive once in your life. Four hours each way along a 52-mile, winding, treacherous–primarily one-lane–road through some of the most beautiful panoramas in Hawaii.

Engineers around the world must calculate the most efficient routes over massive mountains, through densely populated cities and around unavoidable bodies of water, all while accounting for the ecological and financial cost of such projects. The results can be astonishing.

Two more of the best:

The Magic Roundabout, Swindon, England

Notice this is actually five roundabouts in one:

The Trollstigen, Norway

Known as ‘The Troll Ladder’ with an average 9% grade, it cannot be fun in the winter:

Tags: Roadways

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 9:03 AM and is filed under Civil Engineering, Engineering, Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.