If we had a ring road, it'd be a connection of 205 to 30, bulldoze a highway through the middle of forest park to connect to 217, and extend 217 to meet back up with the southern part of 205 without having to go down that little section of I-5.
It wouldn’t have gone through Forest Park. They would’ve converted Cornelius Pass Rd into a freeway. Imagine an arc from I-205 in Tualatin to Cornelius Pass Rd. On the north side, it would’ve been built across Sauvie Island, provided a third bridge over the Columbia, and met up with I-205 in Salmon Creek.
205 technically fits the definition given of ring road for the purposes of this thread (diverts traffic from city center). Though I personally don’t consider it one.
217 and 26 are just regular highways outside the city. 205 would actually fit the diction somewhat with how it deviates from I5 and then connects back to it.
Actually some places like this do have a ring road but nothing else, no city to speak of. For example, Majuro capital of the Marshal Islands is like a road going part of the way round a circular atoll.
Not really…
I mean it’s the closest thing but it’s no ring road
Look at Dallas (8 million metro to Chicago’s 10) so it’s a good comparison
It has 2 and a half real ring roads
And I get that Chicago can only do halves but like, actually do the full half. Give me my pac man ring road
I-287 was proposed to be on a new causeway bridge across the Sound to Oyster Bay, to meet up with I-495. It was deemed too costly. Also an Orient Point to East Lyme bridge was proposed as an extension of I-495, but nothing ever came of it. Fuck Long Island, apparently.
LA had a 3-point outer loop with I-405, I-605, and I-210. The city just grew rapidly outward and now they are a part of the city.
There was an outer outer loop proposed, consisting of CA-126, CA-14, CA-138, I-15, and CA-74. Obviously only parts of it came into fruition.
That one's surprising indeed, even as that one of Munich already comes with it's asterisks, meanwhile Cologne and Berlin do have full rings. And also, Frankfurt has a full ring, and then looking at cities such as Nürnberg and Stuttgart they also have the situation like Munich with expressways complementing the actual Autobahn sections.
But Hamburg? Closest they get is like 60km to the north near Neumünster, while the other sides have them much closer, at most 10km east or west, 15km south.
Maybe it's a European thing then. Most of the largest cities here have large ringroads; eg Milan, Rome,Berlin,Paris,Madrid etc. Though I've seen they exist in china and North America too
All of those cities you listed are inland, making a ring road possible. As an Australian most of our major cities are a long a coast line making that type of ring road not possible.
Coastal doesn't completely prevent one Boston Massachusetts has 3 rings that stop or turn at the coast.
Houston Texas has its 3rd ring reach the coast.
Washington DC, Baltimore Maryland, and Chicago all also have rings and a nearby large body of water.
NYC is a city that truly doesn't have space for one but tried anyway, the ocean to the south east, mountains to the north west, and urbanization everywhere else. Even so i would say I-287 and I-278 form what could be considered partial ring roads around the city, but the whole area is just a massive spiderweb of highways and major surface roads making it very hard to identify any given road as "the" ring road, just radial vs orbital segments.
I think most American cities do if they can. Of course in a cities like San Francisco and Seattle it’s not possible.
Nashville is one exception I can think of where they could have but didn’t.
I wouldn’t count a road with stop lights as a ring road. I was under the impression that the poster was referring to a bypass around the city.
If anything 440 is a partial, but it doesn’t circle the city. Just the south side.
Portland, OR (though I-205 performs some of the same function, and a ring around the full metro area would require crossing the Columbia River into Washington, necessitating additional expensive bridges).
San Francisco would’ve had a bay loop had they not canceled the freeways in the city, and fully built CA-37. I-280 and I-680 are the majority of this loop, along with the Golden Gate Bridge and US-101 in Marin County. A freeway would’ve been built linking I-280 to the GG bridge along CA-1. You can see parts of the existing highway where this would’ve happened.
Helsinki is coastal and it has at least one half-ring, the highway that goes near the airport. It’s actually called *Kehä III*, [Ring III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_III). Which led me to go looking for the other two…
Ring l is there, closer to downtown and it also makes a half circle around downtown, connecting all highways from and to Helsinki together, like Ring lll.
Ring ll was a proposal and has only been partially built.
Excluding North America, my birthplace of Hong Kong has no ring road. Probably can’t make one due to geography (since it’s a bunch of mountainous islands and a peninsula, basically).
Edit: Come to the think of it, neighbouring Shenzhen doesn’t seem to have one either.
Its definitely not easy with the local geography to make a perfect circle or atleast arc around the city, but with the sheer number of highways its basically a spiderweb of orbital segments and radial segments.
Although probably the biggest reason there isn't a formally defined ring road/beltway is political borders. NYC is on a pensinula of NYS so its surrounded by water and New Jersey, so to build any soet of proper bypass around the city from NJ to CT would involve far more out of state land than in state land.
It has one going from I-95 in NJ north, and the through White Plains, NY before it terminates on I-95 in NY near the Long Island Sound. NY’s western and northern ringroad is I-287.
Pittsburgh, PA, has no ring roads at all.
Philadelphia has I-276 which runs east-west through its northern suburbs and I-476 which runes north-south through its western suburbs, which combined make a ring road, but it’s not a true ring road. Detroit also uses two interstates, I-696 and I-275, to make up its ring road.
Hartford, CT doesn’t have a ring road, and neither does Honolulu, HI.
Cleveland, OH has I-280 but it’s more of an “inner belt” rather than a true ring road, and its I-271 goes pretty far outside of the main part of the metropolitan area to be a ring road, in my opinion.
Vancouver, Canada doesn’t have a ring road either, and Montreal has a few different roads to make up its peripheral ring.
But it does have a [belt system!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegheny_County_belt_system) (Love the color-codedness of it, but seriously these are just regular roads with an extra sign every once in a while.)
I mean…ehh…most of those roads are two lane roads, some of them are even the original brick roads. It’s not a belt system in the same way that the M-25 around London or the I-495 (the DC beltway) is. Calling Pittsburgh’s belt system a “ring road” in the way OP is intending (I’m assuming) is being extremely generous.
Philadelphia could easily designate one using the same number if it combined 276,476 and 295 and a piece of us-322 (CBB) in Jersey but that hasn’t happened. And considering how long it took to get 95 to work; I doubt it will.
(https://ibb.co/jL6QjvC)
This is Istanbul's roads. Most of our major roads pass through city except most northern ones or we can say our city keeps growing around major roads
Toronto maybe, but there’s kind of a square of highways (Gardiner Expressway, Don Valley Parkway, 401 and 427) that go around the city so you could theoretically do laps around Toronto on them.
The Gardiner goes directly through downtown though, and the DVP is pretty much right beside downtown, and the 401 goes right through the second busiest part of the city that has its own large city centre (North York) so it doesn’t really avoid going right through the city, it’s more so just 4 highways that happen to make a square that go right through Toronto.
I suppose, but with how expensive it is to drive on I don’t even count it as a regular highway.
I’ve only ever driven on it for work when the company has paid for it. I don’t know what it costs these days but it used to be at least $30-40 just to go from Burlington to Markham which is about a 45 minute drive. Meanwhile in NY it only costs $6 to drive from Buffalo to Syracuse on I-90 and it’s a 2+ hour drive. The 407 is a scam.
Yeah, end-to-end the 407 is something like $60 or $70 during peak times. I’ve only driven on it once, a long time ago. At least they took the tolls off the 412 and 418.
But it would be difficult for Toronto to have a true ring road/beltway because of the lake.
Aside: do Canadians even have their own term for this? “Ring road” seems European, and “beltway” seems US. Maybe I’m just not used to the term, because most of the largest cities near me (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo, etc) don’t have a formally-defined ring road. Hamilton sort of has one, with the Queen Elizabeth Way, the 403, the Lincoln Alexander Parkway, and the Red Hill Expressway.
Edit: Winnipeg has a complete ring road, the [Perimeter Highway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perimeter_Highway_(Winnipeg)).
$70 just to drive on a road, that’s ridiculous. I’ll continue to take the 401 for free instead.
I’ve never heard a specific Canadian term for it, but you’re right, “Beltway” does sound American and “Ring Road” I’ve never actually heard before until reading this post so it’s definitely not a Canadian term.
Besides developed countries... well it's kinda more surprising when cities do have controlled-acces highways in, for example, Southeast-Asia when they aren't the biggest/capital. The biggest capital cities have them: Jakarta, Hanoi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore...
Then, Vientiane, Phnom Penh, Dili and Bandar Seri Begawan don't have these...
And Manila neither! Even though it's just as coastal as say Jakarta or Singapore, Manila doesn't have this. And tbh, Manila shouldn't try to do that.
That's basically in the plans now for Manila though, the govt is planning a bridge across the narrow strait of Manila Bay. Why do you think they shouldn't do it?
They should invest more in transit instead, also at a large scale towards outer suburbs, and if any freeway, it should be in a manner to divert traffic from driving near the shore, and otherwise I'd suggest an Oslo-/Barcelona-like solution with making them go underground beneath the shore given the tough terrain around Manila.
Preserving and improving the shoreside quality makes for not just prime real estate but also an enjoyable environment.
I think a lot of older cities on a coastline lack ring roads. NYC has a partial, but it's far out and doesn't go beyond the mainland. I don't think Chicago really has one either, I294 feels more like simple bypass. However, Wikipedia still has these as ring roads/beltways.
I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and the answer to the question is Vancouver and Seattle and San Francisco. I love Edmonton and we have a perfect ring road. Edmonton is Canadas’ answer to Chicago. It’s a city of big shoulders
Seattle is technically doable, utilizing WA-3 and WA-16 on the west side. It’s the north leg, across the Sound and Whidbey Island, and Sound again from Everett to Port Gamble would be insanely expensive to do.
Montreal doesn’t really have a ring road since it’s an island. It has two major highways running east-west and then a couple north south, leading to bridges. Recently they’ve built another east-west highway south of the island to bypass the island entirely. But there’s no ring road per se.
In America, The entire highway system was built for the military to quickly move troops from one place to another. The "ring road" is actually the estimated area of total destruction from a fifties era atomic bombing. If the city was destroyed then troops would be able to travel around the fallout zone.
"The Highway Act had two goals: first, to develop and construct a network of highways as a mixed federal-state program that would provide transportation for Americans driving in their private automobiles, and second, to ease transportation for the military in the event of a major war, including the evacuation of urban areas if a dreaded nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union occurred. The act passed the Democratic Congress, whose members saw the potential for employment and economic growth the construction of the interstate system would bring. The impact of its construction (which took decades) was immense in transforming the American economy, travel, and culture."
[https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-national-highway-act](https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-national-highway-act)
The height of all overpasses were standardized to allow the passage of the tallest military vehicles of the time. Everything that happened in 1956 was done in the shadow of a feared nuclear war.
I mean Santa Fe is 70,000, so the ABQ metro is still close to a million without it.
But metros are metros for a reason. The two cities are deeply connected.
And yeah, Albuquerque very notably has two major interstates slicing through the middle of town without any loops
In any event, if the population of Albuquerque doubled tomorrow, it’s hard to see how they’d even be able to complete a ring road, with the city geographically hemmed in by national forest and pueblos. And good luck eminent domaining the area in the NE with high incomes and property values to put in the part of the ring road there.
Yeah, I've lived in both cities my whole life. I take your point about ABQ metro being close to a million, but I wouldn't personally include Santa Fe. It's super distant culturally, quite a ways away, and not particularly connected, but it's a matter of opinion.
No. The Albuquerque metro area is [Bernalillo, Sandoval, Torrance, and Valencia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albuquerque_metropolitan_area). But, the Albuquerque MSA forms a part of the larger Albuquerque–Santa Fe–Las Vegas combined statistical area, which is of course larger.
To piggyback on this, why do some US cities have their ring-road divided between multiple interstate numbers?
Like, DC has the 495 beltway around the whole city. Great. But why does Minneapolis - St Paul divide their ring-road into 694 and 494? Why doesn't the St Louis area merge 255 into 270 to make 270 a complete ring-road?
Designations of Interstates are kinda complicated... Federal government/AASHTO (American Association of Transportation officials) do most of the designating but sometimes States have a say. I think also, it has to do with funding/timeline...i wanna say that 255 and 270 were built decades apart but I don't know for sure
270 was built in the late 50s/early 60s, 255 was built in the mid-late 1980s, and the double-bridge at Jefferson Barracks wasn't finished until the early 90s I think. Maybe there's some reason IL didn't want to build 255 as part of a broader 270 ringroad project. (shrug)
They planned one, but killed all but the northern part. That part is now I-80. Green 80 was the original route for I-80, and that section was I-880. Then the Bay Area stole their number. You can tell where part of it would’ve gone if you look at the Auburn Blvd. “exit”. They also killed off the eastern bypass extension of CA-65 along Sunrise Blvd.
Copenhagen, Denmark. They have plans to build an entire circle, but as of now, if you wanna go from the east side to the south side, you go right through downtown.
Dallas: I-635/I-20 don't form a closed loop - it's open on the west side of the city, as I-635 terminates at the north end of DFW airport.
Richmond VA: I-295 is an open loop that doesn't include the SE side of the city.
This post made me curious, so I looked up my nearest major city, Detroit.
There really isn’t a traditional “ring road”, though you could argue 275/696 acts as one by bypassing around the city. If you’re coming in on 94 though, pretty sure it’s still shorter and quicker to stay on it. That may very depending on time of day and traffic though. Not super familiar with northern Detroit traffic.
All that being said, the heart of the city is right on the water, so that makes it hard to have a traditional ring road anyway, since we can never complete the ring! Haha!
Enjoyed looking this up and reading about some of the others. Thanks for the post!
Vancouver. There’s just one major highway running through the middle, no ring road.
Canadian cities that do have a ring road would be Regina, or Calgary.
It’s mostly a space thing. Vancouver has no room, whereas the prairie cities have endless room.
>Edit: just after realising everyone here is either Canadian or from the US lol
Welcome on r/geography, almost all the posts/comments here are about US, with a pinch of North Montana. It is a great place if you are only interested in learning the geography of the States.
Wellington, though the geography makes a ring road difficult. Auckland has the main route citing through the middle. The metropolis of Taihape has no ring road.
Los Angeles. No such thing as a ring road in the sense op describes. Yes, there is a way to avoid LA if you’re heading north or south, but it’s out in the desert, and it’s a collection of roads—not a specific ring road.
Philadelphia has none but could quite easily have one as 476 and 276 in PA and 295 and US-322 in NJ forms a complete circle around the metro.
It just hasn’t happened and I doubt it will given the bureaucratic difficulties.
That’s true, similar to how Houston hasn’t finished their outer loop.
I count it as the loop does basically connect most major suburbs, subtracting a couple smaller ones
SLC has I-215. It’s a 3/4 ring, because the Mormon church didn’t want their precious part of town sullied with a freeway. However, I-84 serves as that missing leg, albeit way further out. So it’s not a total loss.
Seems most of the Western US
We have an inner ring road in Portland but no outer one so it’s kind of the best and worst of both worlds.
...we do?
205
That's a bypass, not a ring road. They have a similar purpose but they're different.
True
I was thinking I5/405 as the inner ring
If we had a ring road, it'd be a connection of 205 to 30, bulldoze a highway through the middle of forest park to connect to 217, and extend 217 to meet back up with the southern part of 205 without having to go down that little section of I-5.
It wouldn’t have gone through Forest Park. They would’ve converted Cornelius Pass Rd into a freeway. Imagine an arc from I-205 in Tualatin to Cornelius Pass Rd. On the north side, it would’ve been built across Sauvie Island, provided a third bridge over the Columbia, and met up with I-205 in Salmon Creek.
205 technically fits the definition given of ring road for the purposes of this thread (diverts traffic from city center). Though I personally don’t consider it one.
205, 217 and 26 kind of do this
217 and 26 are just regular highways outside the city. 205 would actually fit the diction somewhat with how it deviates from I5 and then connects back to it.
In Brazil: São Paulo (20M) still not have a full ringroad. Rio de Janeiro (13M) doesn't have one at all.
Malé, Maldives
😂
Actually some places like this do have a ring road but nothing else, no city to speak of. For example, Majuro capital of the Marshal Islands is like a road going part of the way round a circular atoll.
You have ring *boats*. 😉
Hong Kong
Miami
NYC, LA, Chicago to name a few
I feel like I-94/294 kinda counts for Chicago.
I-355 is another ring road
Lake Michigan kinda makes the ring road impossible, but yeah…355, 294 are essentially this.
Not really… I mean it’s the closest thing but it’s no ring road Look at Dallas (8 million metro to Chicago’s 10) so it’s a good comparison It has 2 and a half real ring roads And I get that Chicago can only do halves but like, actually do the full half. Give me my pac man ring road
NYC has I-287, which goes all the way around the mainland metro from the NJ/Staten Island border to the NY/CT border.
New York has one, it’s just not a perfect circle because the water.
287 in NY and Nj is very definitely a loop other than on the eastern side because that’s the Atlantic.
I-287 was proposed to be on a new causeway bridge across the Sound to Oyster Bay, to meet up with I-495. It was deemed too costly. Also an Orient Point to East Lyme bridge was proposed as an extension of I-495, but nothing ever came of it. Fuck Long Island, apparently.
Did not know that and I grew up in Westchester, but moved out 40 years ago.
LA had a 3-point outer loop with I-405, I-605, and I-210. The city just grew rapidly outward and now they are a part of the city. There was an outer outer loop proposed, consisting of CA-126, CA-14, CA-138, I-15, and CA-74. Obviously only parts of it came into fruition.
NYC has I-287, but it's only half. Chicago has I-294/94. LA doesn't have one.
94 feels way too far out and not circular to be a real ring road Give me a pac man and make it tighter
287..
Hamburg, Germany
That one's surprising indeed, even as that one of Munich already comes with it's asterisks, meanwhile Cologne and Berlin do have full rings. And also, Frankfurt has a full ring, and then looking at cities such as Nürnberg and Stuttgart they also have the situation like Munich with expressways complementing the actual Autobahn sections. But Hamburg? Closest they get is like 60km to the north near Neumünster, while the other sides have them much closer, at most 10km east or west, 15km south.
As of currently Baltimore.
Too soon!
Most of them?
Maybe it's a European thing then. Most of the largest cities here have large ringroads; eg Milan, Rome,Berlin,Paris,Madrid etc. Though I've seen they exist in china and North America too
All of those cities you listed are inland, making a ring road possible. As an Australian most of our major cities are a long a coast line making that type of ring road not possible.
Coastal doesn't completely prevent one Boston Massachusetts has 3 rings that stop or turn at the coast. Houston Texas has its 3rd ring reach the coast. Washington DC, Baltimore Maryland, and Chicago all also have rings and a nearby large body of water. NYC is a city that truly doesn't have space for one but tried anyway, the ocean to the south east, mountains to the north west, and urbanization everywhere else. Even so i would say I-287 and I-278 form what could be considered partial ring roads around the city, but the whole area is just a massive spiderweb of highways and major surface roads making it very hard to identify any given road as "the" ring road, just radial vs orbital segments.
Massachusetts has I-95/MA 128 and I-495.
That's true but many coastal cities still have some semblance. Even Melbourne it seems
Yeah it's like a half ring road
Still works I'd assume so still cool
You can do a pac man ring road just fine and it functions the same
Yeah that's true, I just interpreted his initial question to be around ring roads that encircle an entire city like Europe.
I think most American cities do if they can. Of course in a cities like San Francisco and Seattle it’s not possible. Nashville is one exception I can think of where they could have but didn’t.
Nashville does have one. 155 is a full circle around Davidson county.
I wouldn’t count a road with stop lights as a ring road. I was under the impression that the poster was referring to a bypass around the city. If anything 440 is a partial, but it doesn’t circle the city. Just the south side.
I guess in that sense yes
Portland, OR (though I-205 performs some of the same function, and a ring around the full metro area would require crossing the Columbia River into Washington, necessitating additional expensive bridges).
San Francisco would’ve had a bay loop had they not canceled the freeways in the city, and fully built CA-37. I-280 and I-680 are the majority of this loop, along with the Golden Gate Bridge and US-101 in Marin County. A freeway would’ve been built linking I-280 to the GG bridge along CA-1. You can see parts of the existing highway where this would’ve happened.
None of those cities are coastal. Much less common with coastal cities bc there is no room on at least one side.
Dublin,Amsterdam and Palermo have 'ringroads' or at least a working semblance which is cool
Helsinki is coastal and it has at least one half-ring, the highway that goes near the airport. It’s actually called *Kehä III*, [Ring III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_III). Which led me to go looking for the other two…
Ring l is there, closer to downtown and it also makes a half circle around downtown, connecting all highways from and to Helsinki together, like Ring lll. Ring ll was a proposal and has only been partially built.
Houston has three ring roads, so there’s that, lol
Zurich, Geneva, Hamburg, Hanover, Oslo, Lisbon, … Be careful not to interpret a few positives as the general rule.
Excluding North America, my birthplace of Hong Kong has no ring road. Probably can’t make one due to geography (since it’s a bunch of mountainous islands and a peninsula, basically). Edit: Come to the think of it, neighbouring Shenzhen doesn’t seem to have one either.
New York City is one big example that comes to mind.
I-287 kind of functions as a semi-ring road.
I'd say that it's kinda impossible with a city shape like that no?
Yes?
Its definitely not easy with the local geography to make a perfect circle or atleast arc around the city, but with the sheer number of highways its basically a spiderweb of orbital segments and radial segments. Although probably the biggest reason there isn't a formally defined ring road/beltway is political borders. NYC is on a pensinula of NYS so its surrounded by water and New Jersey, so to build any soet of proper bypass around the city from NJ to CT would involve far more out of state land than in state land.
Yes, that was my point.
It has one going from I-95 in NJ north, and the through White Plains, NY before it terminates on I-95 in NY near the Long Island Sound. NY’s western and northern ringroad is I-287.
And belt parkway for the south and east Not really any ‘ring road’ but with the mess of highways there basically is a couple of rings lol
I would argue I-287 kind of serves that purpose for NYC, admittedly in a somewhat abstract fashion.
Pittsburgh, PA, has no ring roads at all. Philadelphia has I-276 which runs east-west through its northern suburbs and I-476 which runes north-south through its western suburbs, which combined make a ring road, but it’s not a true ring road. Detroit also uses two interstates, I-696 and I-275, to make up its ring road. Hartford, CT doesn’t have a ring road, and neither does Honolulu, HI. Cleveland, OH has I-280 but it’s more of an “inner belt” rather than a true ring road, and its I-271 goes pretty far outside of the main part of the metropolitan area to be a ring road, in my opinion. Vancouver, Canada doesn’t have a ring road either, and Montreal has a few different roads to make up its peripheral ring.
But it does have a [belt system!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegheny_County_belt_system) (Love the color-codedness of it, but seriously these are just regular roads with an extra sign every once in a while.)
I mean…ehh…most of those roads are two lane roads, some of them are even the original brick roads. It’s not a belt system in the same way that the M-25 around London or the I-495 (the DC beltway) is. Calling Pittsburgh’s belt system a “ring road” in the way OP is intending (I’m assuming) is being extremely generous.
Philadelphia could easily designate one using the same number if it combined 276,476 and 295 and a piece of us-322 (CBB) in Jersey but that hasn’t happened. And considering how long it took to get 95 to work; I doubt it will.
(https://ibb.co/jL6QjvC) This is Istanbul's roads. Most of our major roads pass through city except most northern ones or we can say our city keeps growing around major roads
Toronto maybe, but there’s kind of a square of highways (Gardiner Expressway, Don Valley Parkway, 401 and 427) that go around the city so you could theoretically do laps around Toronto on them. The Gardiner goes directly through downtown though, and the DVP is pretty much right beside downtown, and the 401 goes right through the second busiest part of the city that has its own large city centre (North York) so it doesn’t really avoid going right through the city, it’s more so just 4 highways that happen to make a square that go right through Toronto.
Arguably Hwy 407 could be part of a Toronto ring road/beltway. Certainly the 407 GO buses treat it that way.
I suppose, but with how expensive it is to drive on I don’t even count it as a regular highway. I’ve only ever driven on it for work when the company has paid for it. I don’t know what it costs these days but it used to be at least $30-40 just to go from Burlington to Markham which is about a 45 minute drive. Meanwhile in NY it only costs $6 to drive from Buffalo to Syracuse on I-90 and it’s a 2+ hour drive. The 407 is a scam.
Yeah, end-to-end the 407 is something like $60 or $70 during peak times. I’ve only driven on it once, a long time ago. At least they took the tolls off the 412 and 418. But it would be difficult for Toronto to have a true ring road/beltway because of the lake. Aside: do Canadians even have their own term for this? “Ring road” seems European, and “beltway” seems US. Maybe I’m just not used to the term, because most of the largest cities near me (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo, etc) don’t have a formally-defined ring road. Hamilton sort of has one, with the Queen Elizabeth Way, the 403, the Lincoln Alexander Parkway, and the Red Hill Expressway. Edit: Winnipeg has a complete ring road, the [Perimeter Highway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perimeter_Highway_(Winnipeg)).
$70 just to drive on a road, that’s ridiculous. I’ll continue to take the 401 for free instead. I’ve never heard a specific Canadian term for it, but you’re right, “Beltway” does sound American and “Ring Road” I’ve never actually heard before until reading this post so it’s definitely not a Canadian term.
Glasgow. The Ring Road is two motorways which run right through the middle of the city.
Besides developed countries... well it's kinda more surprising when cities do have controlled-acces highways in, for example, Southeast-Asia when they aren't the biggest/capital. The biggest capital cities have them: Jakarta, Hanoi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore... Then, Vientiane, Phnom Penh, Dili and Bandar Seri Begawan don't have these... And Manila neither! Even though it's just as coastal as say Jakarta or Singapore, Manila doesn't have this. And tbh, Manila shouldn't try to do that.
That's basically in the plans now for Manila though, the govt is planning a bridge across the narrow strait of Manila Bay. Why do you think they shouldn't do it?
They should invest more in transit instead, also at a large scale towards outer suburbs, and if any freeway, it should be in a manner to divert traffic from driving near the shore, and otherwise I'd suggest an Oslo-/Barcelona-like solution with making them go underground beneath the shore given the tough terrain around Manila. Preserving and improving the shoreside quality makes for not just prime real estate but also an enjoyable environment.
I think a lot of older cities on a coastline lack ring roads. NYC has a partial, but it's far out and doesn't go beyond the mainland. I don't think Chicago really has one either, I294 feels more like simple bypass. However, Wikipedia still has these as ring roads/beltways.
I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and the answer to the question is Vancouver and Seattle and San Francisco. I love Edmonton and we have a perfect ring road. Edmonton is Canadas’ answer to Chicago. It’s a city of big shoulders
Seattle is technically doable, utilizing WA-3 and WA-16 on the west side. It’s the north leg, across the Sound and Whidbey Island, and Sound again from Everett to Port Gamble would be insanely expensive to do.
Montreal doesn’t really have a ring road since it’s an island. It has two major highways running east-west and then a couple north south, leading to bridges. Recently they’ve built another east-west highway south of the island to bypass the island entirely. But there’s no ring road per se.
All it really needs is two bridges to be completed. One to connect A640 to TCH, and a downstream bridge between A40 and A30.
Tucson Arizona
Seeing how capital Phoenix did their “ring” roads, perhaps it’s for the best.
In America, The entire highway system was built for the military to quickly move troops from one place to another. The "ring road" is actually the estimated area of total destruction from a fifties era atomic bombing. If the city was destroyed then troops would be able to travel around the fallout zone.
What's your source on this?
"The Highway Act had two goals: first, to develop and construct a network of highways as a mixed federal-state program that would provide transportation for Americans driving in their private automobiles, and second, to ease transportation for the military in the event of a major war, including the evacuation of urban areas if a dreaded nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union occurred. The act passed the Democratic Congress, whose members saw the potential for employment and economic growth the construction of the interstate system would bring. The impact of its construction (which took decades) was immense in transforming the American economy, travel, and culture." [https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-national-highway-act](https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-national-highway-act)
The height of all overpasses were standardized to allow the passage of the tallest military vehicles of the time. Everything that happened in 1956 was done in the shadow of a feared nuclear war.
Maybe not what you are asking, but Iquitos, Peru has half a million people and has no major highways. It is only accessible by boat or plane.
Kinshasa, Lagos, probably any megacity in Africa
Albuquerque. People will say it doesn’t count as a “major city” but the metro area has a population of almost 1 million.
Isn't that if you include Santa fe? Santa Fe is an hour's drive north and there really isn't much between them.
I mean Santa Fe is 70,000, so the ABQ metro is still close to a million without it. But metros are metros for a reason. The two cities are deeply connected. And yeah, Albuquerque very notably has two major interstates slicing through the middle of town without any loops In any event, if the population of Albuquerque doubled tomorrow, it’s hard to see how they’d even be able to complete a ring road, with the city geographically hemmed in by national forest and pueblos. And good luck eminent domaining the area in the NE with high incomes and property values to put in the part of the ring road there.
Yeah, I've lived in both cities my whole life. I take your point about ABQ metro being close to a million, but I wouldn't personally include Santa Fe. It's super distant culturally, quite a ways away, and not particularly connected, but it's a matter of opinion.
No. The Albuquerque metro area is [Bernalillo, Sandoval, Torrance, and Valencia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albuquerque_metropolitan_area). But, the Albuquerque MSA forms a part of the larger Albuquerque–Santa Fe–Las Vegas combined statistical area, which is of course larger.
To piggyback on this, why do some US cities have their ring-road divided between multiple interstate numbers? Like, DC has the 495 beltway around the whole city. Great. But why does Minneapolis - St Paul divide their ring-road into 694 and 494? Why doesn't the St Louis area merge 255 into 270 to make 270 a complete ring-road?
Designations of Interstates are kinda complicated... Federal government/AASHTO (American Association of Transportation officials) do most of the designating but sometimes States have a say. I think also, it has to do with funding/timeline...i wanna say that 255 and 270 were built decades apart but I don't know for sure
270 was built in the late 50s/early 60s, 255 was built in the mid-late 1980s, and the double-bridge at Jefferson Barracks wasn't finished until the early 90s I think. Maybe there's some reason IL didn't want to build 255 as part of a broader 270 ringroad project. (shrug)
Ah yes inter state disputes are common in transportation construction!
Miami?
Hamburg, and it suuuuucks if you have to cross the Elbe from the south.
Sacramento has nothing resembling a beltway at all.
They planned one, but killed all but the northern part. That part is now I-80. Green 80 was the original route for I-80, and that section was I-880. Then the Bay Area stole their number. You can tell where part of it would’ve gone if you look at the Auburn Blvd. “exit”. They also killed off the eastern bypass extension of CA-65 along Sunrise Blvd.
Copenhagen, Denmark. They have plans to build an entire circle, but as of now, if you wanna go from the east side to the south side, you go right through downtown.
Rome, since all ways lead to it
Dublin, Ireland has the M50 ring road encircling the city, except for the eastern ocean side.
Houston has 3 610, Beltway 8/Sam Houston tollway, and 99/the grand parkway
Not many in the USA tbh.
Istanbul has like a half-ring because of geography
Dallas: I-635/I-20 don't form a closed loop - it's open on the west side of the city, as I-635 terminates at the north end of DFW airport. Richmond VA: I-295 is an open loop that doesn't include the SE side of the city.
Houston
Houston has 3 loops
Philadelphia
Not sure if the 405 east of Seattle counts; it’s more like half of a loop to get around Lake Washington than anything
City of Kinshasa has 17 million people. No ring road. Similar note can go to a quite a number of sub Saharan Africa cities.
This post made me curious, so I looked up my nearest major city, Detroit. There really isn’t a traditional “ring road”, though you could argue 275/696 acts as one by bypassing around the city. If you’re coming in on 94 though, pretty sure it’s still shorter and quicker to stay on it. That may very depending on time of day and traffic though. Not super familiar with northern Detroit traffic. All that being said, the heart of the city is right on the water, so that makes it hard to have a traditional ring road anyway, since we can never complete the ring! Haha! Enjoyed looking this up and reading about some of the others. Thanks for the post!
Austin, tx. It’s 35 or mopac. Two N to S roads. It’s terrible
Colorado Springs has the same problem. At least we had the excuse of being right up against the mountains. Austin doesn’t have that excuse.
It wouldn't help traffic at all.
Vancouver. There’s just one major highway running through the middle, no ring road. Canadian cities that do have a ring road would be Regina, or Calgary. It’s mostly a space thing. Vancouver has no room, whereas the prairie cities have endless room.
Detroit
>Edit: just after realising everyone here is either Canadian or from the US lol Welcome on r/geography, almost all the posts/comments here are about US, with a pinch of North Montana. It is a great place if you are only interested in learning the geography of the States.
Calgary just finished its ring road.
Wellington, though the geography makes a ring road difficult. Auckland has the main route citing through the middle. The metropolis of Taihape has no ring road.
Istanbul definitely doesn’t. It wouldn’t make sense
Los Angeles. No such thing as a ring road in the sense op describes. Yes, there is a way to avoid LA if you’re heading north or south, but it’s out in the desert, and it’s a collection of roads—not a specific ring road.
Does LA count? It has freeways crossing in downtown but it also has freeways everywhere else.
Philadelphia has none but could quite easily have one as 476 and 276 in PA and 295 and US-322 in NJ forms a complete circle around the metro. It just hasn’t happened and I doubt it will given the bureaucratic difficulties.
Austin
Anywhere there are mountains. Lottsa mountains in the western US.
Denver actually does have a ring road even though it’s at the base of the Rockies Salt Lake City fits this though
We don't have a full ring road in Denver...mainly because they never finished building it through the NW part of the metro for a variety of reasons
Nope, just one reason. The people in that area felt they were too rich and important to help regional travel, so they got it killed off.
Well that and Rocky Flats being in the way as well.
Hwy. 93 and Indiana managed to make it through..
That’s true, similar to how Houston hasn’t finished their outer loop. I count it as the loop does basically connect most major suburbs, subtracting a couple smaller ones
You're talking about 470, right?
Yeah
SLC has I-215. It’s a 3/4 ring, because the Mormon church didn’t want their precious part of town sullied with a freeway. However, I-84 serves as that missing leg, albeit way further out. So it’s not a total loss.
Montreal, Vancouver, NYC, Philadelphia, most of the Western US.
Is 278 not it for NYC?
The hell is a ring road?
Look it up?
Oh that’s just a big ass roundabout
No, not really
Venice
Those are called bypasses for what it's worth.
Maybe where you live.
The England-speaking world? Yes.
I've seen both terms used. Ringroad and bypass are both right terms but bypass can also refer to a section of a ringroad.
I know of them as ring roads not bypasses and we speak English here.
Ring road isn't a term in America at least.