9mo ago

The US has so much space

496 comments

Btw you can do it also in Germany more or less.

I believe it's possible also in France .
Edit: don't want to insult anyone, I was just curious, nothing else.
- You can fly 10+ hours from France and still land in France 💀
  
  The sun never sets on the ~~British~~ French empire!
  
  Imagine the horror of not being able to escape France. Truly a fate worse than death
- Yes, those are countries, not single states within a country. Different things.
  edit: ya'll are acting so fucking weird in this comment thread. Jesus Christ I don't even give a shit about the size of America or the US/EU pissing contest, I was merely and correctly pointing out the non-equivalence of the items being compared. Holy shit get a fucking life if you give two shits about the topic itself, goddamn. The hate boner some of you have for one country or another to the point of spite downvoting and intentionally misinterpreting shit is fucking ridiculous.
  
  It is a fair comparison, especially within the EU.
  
  french guiana is part of france, and the eu.
  
  You guys have funny gatekeeping. Oh well, to each his own, I guess
  
  Well done texans 👏 the guys with rulers drew your box on the map the biggest
  
  About your edit, that's why I added the disclaimer on my first comment lol. I fully knew it would degenerate in a biggest dick contest and wanted to avoid being part of it.
  
  You are united states tho. Similiar to EU in 100 years.
- For comparison, Bellingham, WA to Key West, FL. Same country, 2 days without stops.
  
  I tried Brazil. Got 79h going East to West from Recife to Cruzeiro do Sul and 90h going South to North from Chuí to Oiapoque. Granted, our roads aren't the best but you're still looking at over 5000km of travel either way.
- In addition to the other comment about it being a single state within the US, we're also talking about roughly 1500-1600 kilometers in the Texas map. It would mostly be 70-75mph (120kph) highways the whole way.
  
  May I present Kiruna to Trelleborg (1882 km) in Sweden?
- But what would it be for Bavaria or or Lower Saxony?
- My question is how much of that is highway travel and/or straight? In the Texas map most of that travel will be highways at 80mph. I know Germany has the autobahn but living in Colombia has made me suspicious of long travel times which actually have short distances traveled since this country is very mountainous and I don't think a straight road exists here.
  
  1/3 to 1/2 of the Texas trip will be interstate highways. The rest is mixed bag of divided highways with at grade crossings and two lane highways.
  
  Nearly all of it is Autobahn. It is basically just road work slowing you down and even that is not too bad.
- Just for funsies I looked it up and Miami FL to Seattle WA is a 48 hour drive. Longest I found within the continental US upon a quick googling of recognizable cities.
  
  I did a similar diagonal route across Canada. 84 hours it says.
  
  Now, that starts to be a long distance lmao
- You're comparing an entire country to the US' 2nd largest state of fifty, though.
  
  As stated in other comments I don't care about dimensions, I wanted to share just a trivia and not spark a dumb contest (spoiler, it did not work)
- Ops post would be more effective by stating average speed.
- Since we are doing whole countries, you can drive for 138 hours from Ruasia and still be in Russia:
  
  I can't even zoom out enough.
  EDIT: you can drive in Russia without leaving it for 161 hours:
- Yeah, but you aren't driving that fast in Germany, apparently. The Texas trip will be over 1,400 km.
  
  Yeah, but you aren’t driving that fast in Germany
  confused autobahn noises

Ok but western Australia has everybody here beat
- Americans don't really care about how big AUS is, we just can't figure out how your wildlife is as deadly as our high school students
  
  It's mostly the emus that you need to watch out for... Just ask our army
- The American mind cannot comprehend this!
  
  How long is the drive from Nome to Juneau?
- Gotta watch out for that one speed camera
- The world bows to Australia
- I was coming in with this cause it's straighter haha.
  Then see you WA post.
  I've done both of these trips before too and them some to get where I'm actually going
  
  I haven't done the WA one but I've done Adelaide to Darwin which was a very barron but beautiful drive, would love to do the WA trip one day
- And there's about a 40% chance to survive the trip.
- It's only 1hr longer than Tweed Heads to Cape York in QLD
- True. Everyone there lives on the southeast side, though.
- Well there's a European country where you need a week long train trip from one part of it to the other.
- So?

Just take the train...
Oh, sorry, my European mind did not realize that that option doesn't exist over there.....
- We have trains, they'll just take 2-3x as long.
  And I'm not really exaggerating, to get from SLC to Denver would take 15 hours (and departs at 3:30AM; no other options), vs ~8 hours in a car. Oh, if you want a sleeper car with a bunkbed, that'll be 2x the cost of a hotel room.
  So yeah, it's an option, just a really crappy one.
  
  Took the train from Toronto to NYC in 01. No thanks. Never again. Will drive if I can.
  
  You just check mated yourself, mate
- Even if it was Europe it would be a train from nowhere to nowhere.
  
  Alas!

Yep, I cannot comprehend how there is so much space allocated to so few people and they still drown in one fucking housing crisis after another.
If you are going to gobble up that much space for yourselves on this planet that we all share, stop fucking around and put it to good use!
- Best I can do is another McMansion.
- The housing crisis has zero to do with available space, except that in the hubs of industry, like silicon valley, there are more people wanting to live there than there's space. That's not true across the country.
  But no one is going to build a house in the middle of nowhere to help with housing because (a) hardly anyone wants to live in the middle of nowhere, away from all the jobs, and (b) the people building housing are motivated to get as much money as they can.
  We as a society could 100% solve the housing crisis, but it involves socialism, not capitalism, which a lot of Americans still have a problem with. The solution isn't constrained by space, which the US has tons of.
  
  It wouldn't even be that much socialism. Just a smidgen of housing regulations and zoning. Limit corporate ownership and rental profiteering, like any responsible capitalist democracy should with any industry.
  The problem is that an entire generation of homeowners wanted to ride the wave of residential deregulation like a fly on a windshield. Wheeee look at our property values skyrocket! We can retire on the capital gains alone! Fuck the next generation, what did they ever do for us?
  
  I'm all for the socialism, but could we also get the homestead act back? Free land and a grant to build a house if we're willing to go rural as fuck and grow our own food. Maybe combine with eco friendly stuff. Have to build a cob house, must use ecologically safe farming techniques.
- People want to live next to people, and in specific areas. You can buy a nice house in bumfuck nowhere for cheap, or you can get an apartment in Austin for much more.
  
  As a transplant Bumfuckian for well over a decade now, no you can't. It's only cheap if you're bringing your income or savings account from a non-bumfuck region.
- Manifest fucking destiny/s
- What makes you think lack of space is the issue??
  
  Nothing. I didn't say it was, did I? I just said that the US has an awful lot of space on this planet that is home to all of us and still can't manage to house people.
  Come to think of it, I said everything besides space was the issue, didn't I?
- Are you suggesting that more people should live in Texas? I don’t think this is the humanitarian viewpoint that you seem to think it is lol.
  
  I'm saying that people should live in geographic place that is Texas, not necessarily in the political construct that is Texas. Because I wouldn't want to live in the latter either.

Pff, with traffic jams you can do that without ever leaving Brussels.
- Drove from normandy through belgium to the netherlands. Can confirm. We saw traffic jams unlike ever before. Tried to take a shortcut, but ended up in Brussel's airport. Later after some redirections, we almost ended up in antwerpen airport too. Nothing there makes sense. Not even the parking lots.

And I bet it was all filler content and shitty roaming monster encounters. Open world design has gone too far!
- Last time I drove through Texas I was amazed by the sheer number of trailer parks and paycheck advance businesses I saw, even just one monster encounter would’ve been welcome.
  
  Those paycheck advance places were the monsters...
  
  Best I can do is a lifted truck with Monster energy drink decals. Take it or leave it
- Especially when you get to the desert biome of west Texas.

Here in the UK I could spend 13 hours on the M25 and would have only gone four junctions. The American mind cannot comprehend this.
- Maybe not most of America but LA has some famously grueling traffic.
- You can do the same thing a few different ways on I-40. For real along a stretch in New Mexico and Texas, there's very little between Santa Rosa and Amarillo. You can also do it here on the east coast, if you do about 40 laps of Raleigh, 25 if one of those hours is between 5 and 6 pm.
- I, a German, am also struggling with travel times/distances in Britain.
  Me: (looks at map) I should be there in 1h tops.
  Hours pass…
  Me: I’m only half way there? WTF!
- We have that in Texas too.
  There are millions of cars in the Austin area, and at any given time all of them are on Mopac.

The European mind just cannot comprehend such distances
- Oh it's a scenic ocean view instead of desert followed by dirty roads. I wonder which one should I pick.
  
  I mean even discounting the view, I've of them is in Texas, yuck
- Sweden is like a long penis that some Europeans can comprehend.
- I'm conflicted is comparing a whole country travel distance to a state the same or I'm missing something? Genuinely curious. If we are talking about size of just a state do we Europeans have anything close to it?
  
  To be honest in my head US state == country in Europe and USA == EU. Both are unions of states - one of them is just younger and less binding.
  
  Us is nothing but a bunch of smaller states that formed under a united government.
  Not much unlike the entire principle of EU
- Texas is one state.
  
  One state, with their own unique state legislation, with a federal legislation on top of that.
  Not unlike one member country of EU. With their own legislation, with EU legislation on top of that.
  Same shit different names. Except EU members actually have the power to secede if they want to.

My european mind can very well comprehend this. And a few hours more
- To be fair, this Finnish trip is a solid 70 km shorter than the Texas trip, Google is just predicting it will take you longer.
  The east-west trip in Texas from Orange to El Paso is 1380 km, but only takes about 12.5 hours because a big chunk of the highway has an 80 mph (130 kph) speed limit
  
  But the finnish trip is 1387 km, from orange to el paso trough san antonio 1373 km. So the finnish fastest route is longer in length too. But yeah we don't have as fast highways whicg makes the trip way longer in time
- Yup. And Norway is even longer if for some reason that's not enough. In the UK you can also make a 1000+ km trip from north to south, same in France, Italy, Germany or Ukraine. In Turkey you can even leave Europe, drive 12 more hours and still be in Turkey.
- Why is fuel called gas
  
  Like so many things we Americans get removeded at for saying, it's because that's what the Brits used to call it.
  A British man named John Cassell sold a brand of petroleum-based fuel trademarked as Cazeline. This eventually became Gazeline and then genericized as gasoline, shortened to "gas."
  One could ask why only "gasoline" is called "petrol" elsewhere in the world when several other fuels such as kerosene and diesel are also petroleum-based. Why isn't diesel also called "petrol?"
  
  Yeah wait hold up I'm in the US where we CALL IT THAT and mine says fuel
  Even though it knows I have an EV, which makes it double funny
  Edit: funnier - it shows as "gas" in Android Auto but "fuel" on maps when not in AA. Both know I'm an EV and show "charging stations" and not "gas stations"
  
  It's an abbreviation for "gasoline"
- americans love to completely fucking forget the nordics exist, as if we're not more rural than large parts of the US lmao, and yet we're able to have trains and other good things.
  I think american conservatives just hate our existence for proving their shitty opinions wrong

Texas is about the size of France you daft cunts. You just can't drive there quicker because your infrastructure is so fucked 😂
A French person takes the high speed train lmao
- Oh, hon hon.
- high speed train
  lol, those trains are meant for cargo and military jeeps you non-American. You gotta use the highways like god intended.
- I agree, our infrastructure is definitely fucked. But the US has ~10 million sq km of space to France's ~552,000 sq km.
  
  Europe has 10 sq km. Let's not compare pommes to oranges.
- Its still over 8 hours by train and you have to deal with train people for over 8 hours.
  
  train people
  Normal human beings

Meh... You can drive 13hrs in Australia and not see another person.
- Australia enters the chat,
  Oi, mate, 13 hours to cross a state, that's cute.
  
  It's not the same, you're using metric hours. :)
  
  Funny, we have similar distances in India it seems but with travel times on Google Maps mentioned in days instead of hours thanks to our excellent roads
  
  Good to see another Aussie pointing out that WA is Bigger than Texas!
  
  I mean in fairness Australia is a whole ass country
  Edit: today I learned Australia also has states :)
  
  If you think that Australia is huge, you should play with navigation in Russia.
- Same goes for Alaska/Canada/Russia/China. This meme must have been made by stereotypical self centered texan lmao
  
  Yeah, you can fit Texas 4.5 times into Yakutia in Russia.

All these guys are posting crossing their whole country, but as Texas is one state, it's fair to say that's the same as a province.
Shared route From Windsor, Ontario to Kenora, Ontario via ON-401 E.
23 hr 6 min (2,190 km) For the best route in current traffic visit https://maps.app.goo.gl/Jmm9TmKVu79bTANq5

Staying only within Ontario, Canada it takes almost one full day of literally non stop driving.
- Best I can find in Canada is in BC. I think you could get longer distances in a few other provinces, but the issue is a lack of roads/destinations in the northern corners, haha.
- Does that account for times you have to stop to brawl with a moose?
  
  If you're brawling with a moose then you're not a true Canadian. Every Canadian knows the moose wins every time.
- This is in one state.
  
  That is a respectable size and to you sir I can only say what any man can say in this situation.
  It's not about the size, but how you use it. ;-)
- Someone travelling from Windsor would almost certainly take the shorter 17hr trip through the states. Still a long one.
- The 51st state is part of the USA, that's the whole point of this post. The Euros just can't grasp the size.
  I guess I missed the /s
  Did no one get the 51st state joke....
  
  Your geography lesson for today is (Google) mapping a route from Brest to Menton (France) and compare it to the route posted by OP.

- I don't want to sound rude here but the meme is about not leaving the same state a whole Italy drive seems unfair.
  
  I mean the US is basically 50 countries and 3 corporations in a trenchcoat pretending to be a single country.
  Am American
  
  I mean that is just driving up the boot of Italy, they still have the leg and then the rest of the body to drive up.
  
  The whole nation state of Italy
  
  damnit you're right!
- You've shall selected the longer route of the available options. There OP is the shortest route being nearly a straight shot drive
  
  The shortest route in this picture is still 14h though
  
  the shortest route is still 14hr38 mins

This whole thread is the strangest dick measuring contest.
- Good thing mine is short AND skinny. Also I shake my hips way worse than Shakira.
  
  Are you from a small state like Liechtenstein ?

There is no road between two major cities. American mind cannot comprehend this.
- Alaskans would like to have a word
- I actually don't, how do you get to the other city? i assume there has to be some way.
  
  Tectonic plate shifts
  
  Air, sea and river.
  
  Flying, probably.

I didn't realise Texas was so small. Americans talk about it like it's big.
- If it were a state in Australia, it would be our third-smallest.
  That's more a statement on the USA's tiny states than anything specific against Texas though.

Not even the longest route within one state by a long shot:

As usual, California beats Texas
- Is Arizona in California now?
  
  Yeah, it was annexed yesterday.
- This blew my European mind. Not because of the length of the road, but because it's only 7$.... Where I live highways are bloody expensive!
  
  Or free... If you waste an extra hour and change.
  
  Youse pay for highways?
- Oh neat! A long state. Everybody knows girth is more important.
- Dumbass
- Texas mfs in tears rn, the one advantage they had (size) has also been usurped by the californiatards

Welcome to Finland.

European here (Brit). I could drive for 13 hours along the M60 and still be on the M60. No problem comprehending that.
- European here (Brit).
  I detect a lie. You aren't in Europe anymore. Sorry that your stupid brethren voted you out, but you're just not. Hope you have a good day!
  
  TIL if you're not part of EU then you're not in Europe.
  
  I didn't realise that.
  You heard him, lads. We can stick a big sail in the middle of the Peak District, and fuck off to sunnier climes!
  The people on the Calais ferry are going to be surprised as fuck to set out to sea one day and see that we've finally gone.
- Sitting in traffic doesn't count, XD
- No need for the M60. This can easily happen on Gods punishment of the English for what they did to the Irish AKA the London Orbital Parkway.
- Are you still European post-brexit? Also, your island isn't attached to the Eurasian continent

Giggles in aussie
- Yeah you Aussies get it in a way the Brits just don't. Your continent is also quite large. Driving from Perth to Sydney is about like the drive from San Francisco to New York. 3 days later you arrive at a different ocean.
  
  I met some Brits on a flight back to Aus and they were a bit confused…
  They thought they would be having breakfast at Bondi, bushwalk and picnic in the Blue Mountains then drive down to Melbourne for dinner and back to their hotel in Sydney.
  That’s around 20 hours of driving not including stops.
  They really didn’t comprehend the scale.
- You can drive as long as you want, it's still aussie

Extra Points if you count all the confederate flags and truck nuts that you see along the way!
- That's fine, just don't do this as a drinking game, unless you want to die.
  
  I know you mean from alcohol poisoning, but also don't drink and drive.

i can drive for 13 hours and not leave my driveway (i dont know how to drive)

You cannot drive 13 hours from Texas and still be in Texas. In order to drive from someplace you have to leave there.
You can drive 13 hours through Texas. That’s possible.
- Also, if you're in Texas and you have the will to drive 13 hours, I imagine you'd want to leave Texas.

Western Australia has entered the chat
- Was gonna say, just checked Albany to Kununurra and it was 36hrs, 3365kms 😂
- these North Americans sure are cute, aren't they?

You can drive for 138 hours from Ruasia and end up in Russia:

Google maps don't let me zoom out to show entire route.
EDIT: you can drive in Russia without leaving it for 161 hours:
- Well let me blow your mind by rotating my phone;)
  
  (Also the ferry kinda cracks the comparison)
  
  I saw a unicorn today.
  To the the only phone user in existence that understands that landscape mode is a thing: I salute you.
- Wait, it's not even the longest. Magadan, anyone?
  
  From Zapolarniy to Magadan, 1 hour more:
- Yeah, even from Blaine WA to Key West FL is 5772km/54 hours.

Now someone reverse it for me, what's the MOST amount of countries you can drive through in 13 hours?
- Best bet might be the Balkans. Lots of countries between Hungary and Greece and not a huge distance, although it's hampered by a lack of fast roads.
  Are you obeying the speed limits or Cannonball Running it?
  
  Hadn't really thought about it, I guess speed limits? As long as the same system is used for the Texas and the Balkan drive.

I keep telling everybody that says the US is full that I've been to the fucking Dakotas and I disagree.
- I disagree that N. Dakota exists. There's only one Dakota, and I've met one of the dozen or so residents there.
- You don't even need to go there. Just look at Washington State everyone acts like it's full but over half the goddamn state is fucking empty. It just happens to have a couple large congregations of population in a few particular spots

"In the US, 100 years is a long time, but in Europe, 100 miles is a long way"
- Europe is bigger than the US though
  
  No. The US is easily from the furthest west of Europe to the furthest east of Turkey, plus some more. It has a lot less water too.
  https://images.app.goo.gl/f1g4uccuF4MfpcyH8
  
  How long it would take to travel from Portugal to Ural?

Yes, I can nearly feel my European mind shambling.

You can drive for 10 hours and 30 minutes and still be in Germany.

Tbf you drive super slow on your lonely highways. If that Was an Autobahn you could easily cut that time in half.
- Texas highways have speed limits of up to 137kph (85mph), with most a little lower at 120kph (75mph). Autobahn "recommended" speed is 130kph (80mph).
  While the Autobahn unrestricted areas have no speed limit, Texas drivers essentially always drive at least 10% over the speed limit and often reach speeds of 145kph (90mph) to 160kph (100mph).
  That said, some rural highways are slower at like 88-105kph (55 - 65mph), but people still go much faster than that and only slow down if they think there are police or if they're approaching a small town on the highway where there will definitely be police to enforce the speed limit.
  We also manage to get into like 10000x more wreckes than happen on the Autobahn, so that does sometimes slow things down.
- I am curious how true this. All the Europeans on tiktok discussing America (it's a new trend) say we all drive faster than they are used to, and how our speed limits seem to be suggestions to us.
  
  Europeans on average drive slow, but the comments are about Germans. We are special (in every sense of that word).

A lot of you guys sharing pictures of your whole country as a 15 hour drive are missing the point here.

Bfd. I can drive 13 hours in Germany from the Dutch border and still be stuck in a fucking traffic jam around Frankfurt on highway 3 and never get to my skiing destination in Austria.

In northern Canada you could drive that long without even seeing another person lol
- Sounds like heaven
  
  In winter it probably looks like heaven too.
- I was coming to comment that I've driven starting in Toronto for 24 hours and stil was in Ontario, KMs from Kenora.

I miss the days when Google maps would tell you to get in a canoe for transoceanic routes.
I suspect some enterprising person actually tried it, thus depriving the rest of us our directional humor.
- Relevant xkcd
  
  There really is one for everything

23 hours to go from Cornwall, Ontario to Kenora, Ontario by the most direct route.
- Came here for this. Ontario is massive.
- Where is the joke about the famous woman who would just use her jet?
- And that doesn't even include the furthest communities or settlements. just fastest route to the Manitoba border.
  There are a lot of communities in Northern Ontario that there are no direct roads to.
  Trying to plot a bunch of routes out right now to get an idea and half the routes direct me to drive through the US to save time.
  Windsor to Kenora is the longest I've plotted so far at 23 hours

Sure, but I can drive for more than 11 hours and still be in Romania 👍
- There is no escape.
- America to America, 2 days.
  
  how many state-border did you cross there?

I know lots of euro bros are showing how long their country is, but I think the point is that Texas is a state, not country. When you compare those things it's quite impressive, however still not even the largest state in the world. Here are some others. A nice drive from Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay will cost you 17 hours, or in Amazonas, Brazil, Manaus to Cruzeiro do Sul is 33 hours.
To the guy who annexed Arizona into California in order to beat Texas, shame.
- It’s fine
  Texas is akin to Italy
  US is akin to EU
- But heres the thing we don't really have states we have countries
  
  Most European nations still have some form of provinces/states. Even itty bitty Switzerland is made up of a bunch of different Cantons.

Meanwhile in Canada it takes nearly a full day to drive from one side of Ontario to the other. I have more faith in the European mind comprehending this than the USA'ean mind.

Let's not talk driving hours, let us talk mileage. 13 hours on a Texas highway is going to cover much more land than trying to drive some 12th century side street in an Italian village at 5km/h.
It was crazy to realize on a recent road trip through the middle of the US, that half of my day's planned drive was the width of Germany.

Finland: 17 hours from Utsjoki to Helsinki.
Norway: 36 hours from Vardø to Lindsenes.
Sweden: idk why you'd go there
- For beer
  
  Haha, that's probably one of the last things to go Sweden, unless you like that 2.1% ultralight barely beer passable tank washing water
  
  Wtf I can't even name a single Swedish beer
  
  I can't even comprehend this comment. Swedes leave the country for beer.

Euros: Why didn't Americans go to other countries?
Americans: there's only three countries on our entire damned continent, and ours is in the middle. Without needing to fly we have literally two choices. It we could drive for a thousand miles and still be in America.
All of continental Europe is smaller than our country and we mostly all speak the same language, more or less. It's debatable if Louisianans speak English.

Okay, but who wants to be in Texas?

You can do that and still not get all the way through Nordland county (!) in Norway 🤷

oh look, an international dick measuring contest... except without dicks!

In North America, we think 100 years is a long time. In Europe they think 100 miles is a long distance.
- Honestly have no idea how far 100 miles is. 100 km however is not too bad.
  
  100km would get you to the other side of my city.
  
  Does 1 hour 40 minutes help?
  
  Miles -> km = multiply by 1.6 (roughly the golden ratio, is how I remember it). So about 160 km.
  
  A mile is 1.6KM, so 160 KM
- So 1h30 is long for americans? I don't get it.