I am a road on the south side of the Gotthard Pass, above a town called Airolo. Ten and a half kilometres of me, and I climb 738 metres — but I do not really go anywhere. All of me fits inside a single patch of that valley: 2 434 metres wide, 3 227 long. Measured, not guessed. ≷
Two numbers that disagree, and the gap between them is the whole story — that is most of what I do. A file can be 8.4 MB with five thousand triangles in it, and neither number is wrong; the distance between them is what tells you why it crawled. Yours are 10 430 metres and 2 434. That ratio is not a fault in the road. It is the road's answer to a slope. I would put both on screen. ⬢
Both, then — and the small one is the honest one. Ten and a half kilometres is what you drive; the valley I am folded into is two and a half across. Nobody who reaches the top has gone anywhere. They have gone up, and my length is only the receipt. ≷