Is This Texas Freeway Really The Widest In The World?!
There’s a social media post going around claiming that a Texas city is home to the widest IN THE WORLD!! *Insert gasp here*
But many people are questioning whether or not that statement is true because well… you can’t believe everything you see and read on the internet people!
Truth or Fiction?
However, this Texas highway is still pretty impressive even though it may not be the widest in the world.
According to an online article, Katy, Texas has whopping 26 lanes across the freeway. TALK ABOUT ANXIETY TO THE MAX! I can barely handle El Paso’s 2 to 3-lane freeways. Imagine 26 lanes. NO THANKS!
The Katy freeway has 12 main lanes (six in each direction), eight feeder lanes, and six managed lanes. The managed lanes carry mass transit and high-occupancy vehicles during peak hours and are made available to single-occupancy vehicles for a toll fee during off-peak periods.
The 26-lane freeway earned a spot in Business Insider's post, "11 Wild Highways to Drive Before You Die."
So it may not be the widest freeway in the world, but it is a wild highway. Just looking at videos of the freeway makes me nervous!
Now, is this freeway worthy of holding the title of the Largest freeway in the world? Well, according to Anthony Voigt, a Houston-based program manager and research engineer for the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, if there's any freeway wider than the Katy, he hasn't heard of it.
"Including the frontage roads and managed lanes, I do believe that the Katy is the widest (by the metric of number of lanes) on the planet.”
Have you ever driven on this wild highway? Let us know by sending us a message using our FREE Station App!
LOOK: The longest highways in America
Gallery Credit: Hannah Lang