North American rail network

Transportation in North America is performed through a varied transportation system, whose quality ranges from being on par with a high-quality European motorway to an unpaved gravelled back road that can extend hundreds of miles. There is also an extensive transcontinental freight rail network, but passenger railway ridership is lower than in Europe and Asia.

Railways

Canada, the United States and Mexico

The railroad network of North America (using standard gauge) is extremely extensive, connecting nearly every major and most minor cities. The United States, Canada, and Mexico have an interconnected system with railheads stretching from Hay River, Northwest Territories, Canada, to Tapachula, Mexico, and on Vancouver Island. The state government of Alaska also operates the Alaska Railroad, which does not connect to the North American network. In Canada, rail lines from Labrador City, Newfoundland and Labrador, to Sept-Îles, Quebec, also are not linked to the North American network.

Newfoundland and Labrador

There have been proposals to link the island of Newfoundland to the mainland of North America via a 17 km-long rail tunnel under the Strait of Belle Isle, which would also carry automobile traffic on flatcars, similar to the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France. This has stalled due to the lack of a large road network and a lack of rail lines in Labrador, and the remoteness of the area on both sides of the strait in Newfoundland and Labrador. Another issue to contend with is that Newfoundland had abandoned its Canadian National/Newfoundland Railway lines ( gauge until 1988–1990), turning it into the Newfoundland T'Railway, a rail trail spanning the entire island. An automobile tunnel would be most likely unfeasible due to the length needed to cross the strait, and the difficulties of removing automobile exhaust and bringing in fresh air via large circulation fans throughout the tunnel.

Alaska

Although Alaska is not connected to the North American rail network, there have been proposals to connect it via BC Rail's incomplete but graded rail extension to Dease Lake, where the rails have been laid to Jackson, British Columbia. The only way for rail-based equipment to enter or leave Alaska is via rail ferry from Seattle, Washington. The only railway crossing the Alaska border is the White Pass and Yukon Route, a narrow-gauge heritage railway linking Whitehorse, Yukon, with Skagway, Alaska.

Railheads of the network

The current railheads or endpoints of the rail network are, in the north, at Hay River, Northwest Territories (the northernmost part of the North American rail network, operated by CN), Jackson, British Columbia (formerly BC Rail), Lynn Lake and Churchill, Manitoba ( Hudson Bay Railway), Moosonee (Ontario Northland Railway), Chibougamau and Matagami, Quebec (also CN). In the west, the railheads are at Vancouver, British Columbia, Prince Rupert, British Columbia (CN), with ferry service to Vancouver Island for the railways linking Nanaimo, Esquimalt, and Victoria. In the east, the North American network extends to Halifax, and Sydney, Nova Scotia.

In the south, the rail lines terminate at Port of Chiapas, and Ciudad Hidalgo, with a short dual-gauge spur line to the border city of Ciudad Tecún Umán, Guatemala.

Proposed by Russia

In April 2007 the Russian government announced that it was considering building a rail tunnel under the Bering Strait between Chukotka and Alaska. The tunnel, as projected, would be long and would include oil and gas pipelines, fiber optic cables and power lines. The tunnel project was estimated to cost $65 billion and take 15–20 years to build. In addition to the Russian government, sponsors of the project apparently include Transneft and RAO United Energy Systems.

Central America

Mexico has a connection to Central America, but it is a break of gauge, since Mexico uses , while Guatemala and Central America use narrow gauge . Aside from a short spur line linking border city of Ciudad Tecún Umán, Guatemala, the entire nation is on gauge.

South of Guatemala, there are numerous breaks of gauge, such as (with Honduras), and El Salvador (which uses the same 914 mm gauge of rail, but is currently closed, with some sections abandoned and unusable). Nicaragua has also closed its rail network in 1996, though the majority of it was gauge, with some lines along the Atlantic Coast. Costa Rica's railroads are of gauge, along with a private gauge railroad at 3.5 km in length. The railroads of Panama are connected to Costa Rica. The country had two gauges: originally broad gauge , which was converted to standard gauge () in 2000, and narrow gauge (914 mm). Like the situation with roads, the Darién Gap is a formidable obstacle to railroads, and no railways cross it into South America.

Roadways

The continent's roads are of varying quality, with divided highway standards in some areas but poor-quality gravel or unpaved roads in others. The road network extends from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and Anchorage, Alaska, in the extreme northwest, to Sydney, Nova Scotia, Cartwright, Newfoundland and Labrador, Blanc Sablon and Natashquan, Quebec, in the extreme east, all the way to Yaviza, Panama, in the extreme south. It does not connect with the South American road network due to the Darién Gap.

Some roads are seasonal, such as ice roads that cover frozen bodies of water, winter roads which cross otherwise impassable wetlands only in cold weather, and unpaved mountain roads that turn to mud in the spring. The road network does not reach all settlements, and some remote arctic and subarctic communities are only accessible by seasonal road, open land, sea, or air transport. Some North American islands are served only by ferries or private boat. Notable disconnected islands include the West Indies, Vancouver Island, Newfoundland (island), Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Some roads and some entire localities are intentionally car-free.

United States

The United States road network is the largest in the world, with 6.4 million km (4 million mi) of roadways. of those are Interstate Highways, and around another are U.S. Highways. The Interstate Highway system is almost completely composed of multi-lane, dual-carriageway freeways. The contiguous United States are also connected to its exclave, Alaska, via the Alaska Highway