You’re in luck, as our research has shown, that the average distance to a restroom on UK motorways is 22.7 miles (36.5 km). Sadly, you don’t feel lucky. You are experiencing a sense of desperation. Looking for a well-positioned tree won’t necessarily help, as stopping is not possible.

What is the solution? To prevent discomfort in their bladder, many choose to avoid drinking water before and during a journey. Unfortunately, not good. A study found that dehydrated drivers made over twice as many mistakes as well-hydrated drivers. Similar to drunk drivers’ scores. And driver mistake is the leading reason of road accidents by a long, long way.

In other words, if you feel tired, dizzy or light-headed, suffer cramps, lose concentration or experience headaches come on, it’s way pastime to take a sip.

We’ll explore other ways to manage hydration later. But first, QS Supplies wants to determine the U.S. highways and UK motorways with the longest gaps between toilets. So, we took a sip and headed out onto the information freeway.

Key Findings:

• There is an average of 60.3 miles (97.04 km) between toilet breaks on the M8 – the worst-served UK motorway for service stations.
• The worst road for toilet breaks in the United States is the-49, which runs from Lafayette, Louisiana, to Kansas City, Missouri, with services at an average distance of 264.0 miles (424.9 km).
• The longest stretch of UK motorway without a bathroom is on the M25 between South Mimms and Cobham (44.6 mils or 71.78 km).
• The longest stretch of American highway without facilities is the I-22 from Birmingham, Alabama, to Byhalia, Mississippi – a 202.22 mile (325.44 km) roadway with no stop.

The US Highways With the Biggest Average Gaps Between Service Stations

Following the interstate highway system’s establishment in 1956, safety rest areas sprung up across the country, and these rest areas became an integral part of the great American road trip. “The toilet facility was most often designed to be the architectural centerpiece of a rest area site,” according to RestAreaHistory.org. “Picnic and information shelters were typically created to complement the architectural quality of the toilet building.” As opposed to regular truck stops, these are funded by state transportation departments and are prohibited from selling gasoline, food, or hosting commercial businesses. Sadly, they have become a drain on state resources around the nation, and many have now closed – expanding the gap between toilet stops.

The Longest Stretches of U.S. Highways Without Rest Stops

The Interstate I-49 has two toilet stops along its 528 miles (849.8 km) length, giving a distance between facilities of 264.0 miles (424.9 km). One of these is near Boyce, and the other is near Washington, where the original part of I-49 first existed. The road also runs through Arkansas, but you will have to hold it in that state until you get the endpoint in Kansas City in Missouri. At some stage, the two sections of the Interstate I-49 will meet briefly in Texas when the last part is completed – and while public funding for the project is limited, it seems likely that private companies in Texas will take benefit of this major south-north thoroughfare by catering to motorists’ needs.

The UK Motorways With the Biggest Average Gaps Between Service Stations

QS Supplies team determinate 9 UK motorways with an average of more than 25 miles (40 km) between rest stops – plus the M60, which is 34.8 miles (56 km) long with no toilet at all to be met. The M8 motorway, linking Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, has the most road to cover per service station, with just one stop on its 60.3 miles (97. km) route – Heart of Scotland Services, formerly known as Harthill Services, which was the first service station in Scotland and which featured a restaurant serving fresh fish and chips in the 1970s.

The Longest Stretches of UK Motorways Without Service Stops

With one station along its 60.3 miles (97 km) length, the M8 has the most roadway per station – but you get a distinctly better deal if voyaging from Edinburgh. Come in from the Glasgow end traveling east from the motorway’s start point near Langbank, and you’ll travel two-thirds of its length – 37.0 miles (56 km) -before making it to Harthill, where you can’t even get fish and chips any more.

What you should know about staying hydrated

Before you leave on your journey, it is a good idea to drink a glass of water – since you may forget or be too busy with your hands. Make sure you carry water with you and limit your use of the air conditioning, which dries the air, causing dehydration. You are especially likely to become dehydrated if you have diabetes, have been diarrhoea, vomiting or you have had a lot of sunshine, alcohol or workout.

The methodology behind the study

To discover the average distance between service stations on each interstate highway in the US and each motorway in the UK, the QS Supplies team gathered figures on the number of service stations placed along both types of roadway from interstaterestareas.com and motorwayservices.uk. These do not include alternative service stations that are situated on roadways that divert away from new roads.

After also gathering official figures on the road lengths of interstate highways (kilometres) and motorways (miles), the team evaluated each of their distances in isolation to estimate what the average distance was between each service station or rest stop under the premise that a driver is touring in one direction along the full route. They include some roads that pass through municipalities where unofficial rest stops may be reachable by diverting away onto a different route but which weren’t able to be counted in this study.

To define the longest stretches of U.S. highway and UK motorway without a service station, the QS Supplies team mapped the driving way for each highway using Google Maps. They applied this measurement individually for each direction to evade overestimated distances forced by having to use a return or detour to arrive at a service station on the other side of the road.

Their final rankings considered highways with a distance of 150 km or more in the US and motorways with a distance of 20 miles or more in the UK .

The data for this research was gathered in April 2023.

The post The US & UK roads With The Biggest Gaps Between Toilets appeared first on Vivid Maps.

Looking at this first map from the 2019 American Community Survey, I can see I’d win that bet in almost every county across the US.

Sea of teal. Drive alone, drive alone, drive alone. The only real standout? New York City, glowing orange where people actually take the subway to work like civilized humans.

I dug into the numbers and found something pretty wild. Nationally, just 5% of workers use public transit. That’s it. Five measly percent. Meanwhile, my neighbors can’t figure out why traffic is so bad.

But that 5% is misleading as hell. Out in rural areas, good luck finding a bus route. In big cities though? Sometimes a quarter or even a third of people hop on trains and buses. The difference is night and day.

This second map shows where public transit actually matters – metros where at least 5% of folks use it to get to work.

The Cities That Actually Get It Right

New York crushes everyone else. Over 30% of workers there take the subway, buses, or commuter trains. In Manhattan? More like half.

San Francisco comes in second around 17%. BART gets you across the bay without dealing with bridge traffic. Smart.

DC hits 14%. Their Metro system spreads out into Virginia and Maryland suburbs.

Boston manages 12% on the T. From what I’ve read, it breaks down sometimes, but parking in Cambridge sounds like a nightmare.

Chicago’s at 11% with the L trains. Love how they loop around downtown. Makes way more sense than circling blocks looking for parking.

Philly rounds out the top spots at 9%. SEPTA‘s not fancy, but it works.

See what these places have in common? They built their train systems before everyone fell in love with cars. Dense neighborhoods where walking to the station actually makes sense. Most American cities went the opposite direction—built everything around highways and parking lots.

To learn more about the American transportation system, have a look at the following road atlases and map posters:

• National Geographic Road Atlas: Scenic Drives Edition [United States, Canada, Mexico]
• Rand McNally Road Atlas & National Park Guide
• USA Roads Highways Interstate System Map Poster

The post Public Transportation in the United States Mapped appeared first on Vivid Maps.

Canal gateways are at every end to lift vessels to Gatun Lake, a man-made lake constructed to decrease the quantity of mining work needed for the Canal, 26 meters (85 ft) above sea level, and then lower the vessels at another end. The first constructed gateways were 32.5 meters (110 ft) wide. In 2016 canal was expanded for bigger ships.

Yearly traffic had increased from nearly one thousand ships in 1914 when the Panama Canal was opened to more than 815 thousand ships in 2012.

It can take a big ship up to 11.38 hours to pass through the 82 kilometes-long Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal remains one of the most fantastic engineering structures and wonders of the contemporary world that boggles the mind. The Panama Canal remains one of the most fantastic engineering structures and wonders of the contemporary world that boggles the mind.

Movies and even board games were dedicated to this amazing structure.

15 interesting facts about the Panama Chanel

1. The concept of a canal was first imagined up in the 16th century. Charles V (King of Spain) sent out engineers to examine the feasibility of creating a canal, helping voyage from Spain to Peru.
2. The United States constructed the Panama Canal, but the French started the work.
3. Initially, the United States was engaged in excavating a canal in Nicaragua, not Panama (Nicaragua Canal plan is still in play).
4. More than 25 thousand people died during the building of the Panama Canal.
5. The first vessel to pass the Panama Canal was SS Ancon.
6. The United States assigned the administration of the Canal to Panama in 1999.
7. The Canal is a short cut connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans – 77 kilometres (50miles).
8. The Panama Canal has decreased the sailing length from Atlantic to Pacific by an enormous 8 thousand nautical miles. If we cruise with an average speed of roughly 15 knots, then it will be 22 long days.
9. At every end of the Panama Canal, a locks system elevates ships 26 meters (85 feet) above sea level to an artificial lake.
10. Approximately 1.4 million kilograms (30 million pounds) of explosives were used to remove the rocks during the Panama Canal construction.
11. About 14 thousand vessels use the Panama Canal each year.
12. More than one million ships have passed through the Panama Canal since it opened.
13. The Panama Canal brings around two billion U.S. dollars in profits every year.
14. A swimmer Richard Halliburton paid the lowest price ever for passing the Canal. He swam the entire distance of the Panama Canal in 1928. Due to his weight of 68 kilograms, he was paid 36 cents.
15. The Panama Canal is continually being extended. The last time Panama Canal was enlarged for larger vessels in 2016.

Related posts:
– Great Lakes Profile

The post The Panama Canal mapped appeared first on Vivid Maps.

The first national road numbering system for cross-country travel, 48,053-mile Interstate Highway System estimates for just over 1% of the country’s total road mileage but manages 25.1% of the nation’s entire road trip.

The registered roads and their rights-of-way occupy about 1 percent of the land of the United States (roughly the area of South Carolina).

The map below color codes distance from “major roads.” Areas of lowest distance to road appear in blue. Areas of longest distance are represented in shades of red.

The highest density of roads is in the east and west of the country, where the climate is the most comfortable for living.

Habitat fragmentation and disruption affected by the expansion of infrastructure such as roads endanger biodiversity. Roads work as obstacles by preventing animal migrations and reducing space usage.

The post Remoteness appeared first on Vivid Maps.