(via StrangeMaps)

Known to Americans as a greater metropolitan “bypass,” most of us who have driven/been a passenger in a car are familiar with the six-to-eight-lane monsters. I specifically remember the Amazonian reach of the I-435 from my early days in Overland Park (a suburb of Kansas City); and later, visiting friends in Atlanta, I would try to avoid (unsuccessfully) the 235.

Designed by the Rice School of Architecture in Houston, “Ring Roads of the World” lays out in a weird beauty greater than it’s subject matter ever could, the twenty seven largest urban bypasses from around the world. Color-coded according to city, and ascendingly stacked to scale from grossest to most humble of highway designs, the map is a bit unwieldy. Still, it’s fun to look at. Vienna possesses the smallest ring road, while that black hole which looms behind the rest like a gaping maw, no surprise, represents Houston (home of the Rice School).

StrangeMaps:

The city at the centre of the US’s sixth-largest metropolitan area (with 5.7 million inhabitants) has three ring roads: Interstate 610 [circling downtown in a 38-mile (61-km) loop], Beltway 8 [about 83 miles, or 137 km] and the as yet unfinished Grand Parkway [State Highway 99].

Clearly, for Houston to have the world’s longest loop, the big black blob on this map could only be the latter. But a few problems arise. Four, to be exact.

One: the Grand Parkway is far from finished. Only two of 11 segments are completed. However tempting it may be, it is hardly fair to tout something as “the world’s largest” before it’s been completed. Especially since, as any large-scale project, the Grand Parkway has its share of detractors. So it might never get done.

Two: even if it is to be completed, plans may change and length might vary. The website for the Grand Parkway Association doesn’t specify beyond the “circumferential scenic highway” going to be “180+ miles” (app. 290 km) long.

Three: the Houston orbital outsizes all others on this map to such an extent that it’s difficult to imagine its circumference to be no larger than London’s by a factor of 180 to 117.

And finally, four: now that I’m mentioning London’s orbital road again — the website for the UK’s Highway Agency states that the M25 is… the longest ring road in the world.

Don’t mess with Texas?