Widest Road in the World

Over the last few decades, the number of vehicles on road has increased manifolds all over the world. This has, in turn, evoked the need for putting in more efforts to promote road safety, and the development of roads which are WIDE enough to support the ever growing road traffic in the world is a part of this very road safety initiative. Roads with 8 and 10 lanes are no more rare occurrences, but what about roads with 20 lanes - they surely deserve to be called engineering marvels of the modern world. With quite a few claims about 'world's widest road' making the rounds, there seems to be a lot of confusion as to which is actually the widest road of them all. With all this confusion, the only way out seems to be to get more information on all these roads which are allegedly claimed to be widest - and see whether they are really wide or are mere boastful claims.

World's Widest Road

At its widest point the Ontario Highway 401 in Canada has 18 lanes in the mainline and additional 4 lanes as connecting ramps. If all these lanes are taken into consideration the total amounts to 22 lanes - thus making the Ontario Highway 401 the widest road in the world. This highway is also known as the King's Highway 401 or Macdonald-Cartier Freeway. You need not be surprised if you come across people referring to it as the four-oh-one that it is widely known as in Canada. It stretches from Windsor, in southwestern Ontario, to Quebec, in east-central Canada. Yet another interesting attribute of this road is the fact that the segment of this road which passes through Toronto - which is the largest city in Canada, is the busiest road in North America.