Why do most roads have a lot of bends? What is the process a civil engineer takes in planning out roads depending on their terrain? Is it hard to make more straight roads in canyon/mountain areas and why?
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How hard it is to make straight roads is not the major concern, the relevant factor is the cost of doing that. That is hard as in if we can do it.
A straight road will be one that does not curve in the horizontal and the vertical. If the ground is not flat, to begin with, that requires the moment of a large amount of material and that costs a lot of money. The result is that less work is required if following a path where the round has close to even elevation or change slowly if the elevation of one end is different from the other. The result i that you get lots of curves.
If you look at road construction how straight do you like them to be depend on when it is built and the amount of traffic.
Today we build them straighter than in the past. In part, because the machines that can move stuff are more efficient. Another reason is traffic has increased and how safe we like the road to be. Staiger roads are safer and the effect is large if there is more traffic.
There is also a difference in expiration, a straighter road can have a higher speed limit.
So how road is built are a compromise between construction cost versus road speed, road capacity, and safety.
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