America is Home to the World's Largest Road Network

What We’re Showing

A chart ranking the countries with the largest road networks based on latest available data from the Global Roads Inventory Project (2018).

While more recent data is available from other sources, the GRIP database was developed to provide a comprehensive and consistent global roads density model for use in global environmental and biodiversity assessment projects.

My Way or the Highway

🇺🇸 The U.S., 🇨🇳 China, and 🇮🇳 India together account for more than one-fourth of the entire world’s roadways. However the distribution between the three countries is anything but equal. The U.S. has nearly 2 million miles (3 million km) of roads, compared to China’s 1.1 million and India’s 654,000.

America’s vast Interstate Highway System is key to the country’s extensive road network, costing the equivalent of $600 billion today. Started in 1956, it took nearly four decades to complete per its original requirements.