Short Trivia Q II

[JAG]

About how many miles of roads and streets are there in the U.S.?

[EagleFan]

25.3 million. I have no clue but it has to be some very large number. I would hate to be the guy that has to measure them. But they could always ask the Verizon guy to carry a tape measure along with him "Can you hear me now? 1.2 miles. Can you hear me now?..."

[VPI97]

Originally posted by EagleFan
I would hate to be the guy that has to measure them.I used to do that when I was a kid. My dad bought a cable system in Backwoods, West Virginia and planned to expand coverage. In order to do so, him and his guys needed to string all the cable themselves...one of my tasks in this project was to walk along the road measuring the distances between all the existing telephone/power poles that he was going to rent space on. The thing I used was really just a wheel with a handle on it that did all the measuring for me. I couldn't screw up as long as I stayed in a straight line and wrote down the right numbers that the wheel was telling me.

[EagleFan]

Walk a straight line, so I guess heavy drinking prior to measuring was out of the question.

[RPI-Fan]

FTR, the thing you used is called a <i>trendle wheel</i>.

~rpi-fan

[tucker342]

I have no idea, but I bet it's a pretty high number...

[Anrhydeddu]

About 4 million

http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/2002/html/table_01_01.html

[JAG]

Very good sir, you are correct: about 4 million miles.