Longest street

It is hard to say exactly what the longest street in the world is, as there are many variations in how different types of road are named and classified. The strongest candidates, however, are all located in Ontario, Canada. Here civic planners took the unusual decision to simply extend the road layout grids of the cities on Lake Ontario north into the countryside. The north-south streets of Toronto, Mississauga and other towns in the area keep going north from the lakeshore until they hit some geographical obstacle.

Toronto's main artery, Yonge Street, extends 57 km, ending just north of Holland Landing, and is often described as the longest street in the world. Arguments can be made for other streets, however. Bathurst Street – which runs parallel to Yonge Street, 2 km to the west – is 59 km long (though this depends on how one classifies a kink in the road where it crosses State Highway 1). Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Oshawa, Simcoe Road runs for 80 km north from the lakeshore, though it does subtly change names over its length (Simcoe Street South, to Simcoe Street North, to just Simcoe Street beyond Oshawa's city limits). Finally, Airport Road in Mississauga, starts outside the passenger entrance of Toronto Pearson International Airport and runs northwest all the way to the border of Simcoe County (a distance of 81 km) where its name changes. Some maps, however, show it continuing all the way to the town of Stayner – a distance of 96.1 km

For the purposes of this record, a "street" is defined as a public road that is accessible along its entire length (i.e. not a controlled access road like a highway or freeway) and that has the same name (not a number) for its entire extent. Bathurst and Yonge streets both extend from the lakeshore to the city limits, a distance of around 18.2 km, and the area between the two remains mostly urbanized for almost their entire length.