Longest Highways in the World

A highway is any public road on land that is often numbered and named by the government that develops and maintains it. Highway 1 in Australia is the world’s longest national highway that runs around the country covering a distance of 9000 miles. China has the largest network of highways in the world followed closely by the US. The Pan-American Highway is the longest highway in the world and runs through 14 countries in the Americas starting from North America to South America.

8. BR-153 - Brazil

The BR-153 is Brazil’s major federal highway and is formally called the Transbrasiliana Highway. The highway crosses Brazil north to south where it starts in São Domingos do Araguaia, Pará, and ends at Rio Grande do Sul.

7. National Highway 44 - India

National Highway 44 is India’s longest north-south running highway. The highway begins in Srinagar in the north and ends at Kanyakumari in India’s south.

6. Route 20 - United States

The US Route 20 is a United States highway running from east to west. The “0” in the number of the route denotes that it is a coast-to-coast route. The 5,415 km long US Route 20 is the longest road in the country and is roughly parallel to the Intersate 90.

5. National Highway G010 - China

National Highway G010 is a Chinese highway stretching from Tonjian in Heilongjiang province and passing through the province of Jilin, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Shanghai, Shandong, Fujian, and Guangdong covering a distance of 3,500 miles ending in Sanya in Hainan. It is the longest highway in China to the present day.

4. Trans-Canada Highway - Canada

Trans-Canada highway is transcontinental systems of roads maintained by both the federal and provincial governments and stretches from the west coast of Pacific Ocean and passes through all the ten provinces of Canada to the east coast at the Atlantic Ocean. The highway covers a distance of 4,999 miles long. The highway was approved by the Trans-Canada highway act of 1949 and the construction begun in 1950. It was officially inaugurated in 1962 and its completion was in 1971. At its completion it was the world’s longest uninterrupted highway and it was distinct with the white on green maple leaf markings along its stretch. In 2012, a number of public vehicle charging stations were installed along the highway by the Sun Country Highway company to allow owners of electric vehicles to travel across the entire highway.

3. Trans-Siberian - Russia

The trans-Siberian highway in Russian is made up of a network of federal highways that stretches across the entire country. From the eastern side, it starts at St. Petersburg to Vladivostok covering a distance of 6,800 miles long. The part of the road from St. Petersburg to Irkutsk has been in existence long before even the railway came into existence and the earliest written records of the road was in 1876. Most part of the road was built by the inmates of Gulag prison and varies widely from the eastern side which is well paved to the western side which can transform into impassable during wet summer periods.

2. Highway 1 - Australia

Highway 1 in Australia is a network of highways that run around the country joining all the state capitals in the mainland Australia. The Highway 1 covers a distance of 9,000 miles and is one of the longest highways in the world. Each day more than one million people travel on the part of the road. Highway 1 was constructed in 1955 after a compilation of the already existing local tracks and roads. It is the only route to connect all the Australian territories and states except of the Australian Capital Territory. Most of the country’s highways are tributaries of Highway 1.

1. Pan-American Highway - Multiple Countries

The Pan-American Highway is the longest road in the world and it is comprised of a network of roads that starts in Prudhoe Bay in Alaska and stretches all the way to Ushuaia in Argentina covering a distance of 30,000 miles. The Guinness World Records has named the Pan-American Highway the longest motorable road in the world. The road cross a total of 14 countries in North, Central, and South America, it also links to many other countries. The road passes through all the major climatic zones, tropical jungles, arid deserts, boreal forests, prairies, arctic tundra, mountains, and varied landscapes. The most difficult sections of the road is found in Costa Rica where it raises to 10,942 feet at a point it has been named the Summit of death or Cerro de la Muerte in Spanish.