This sentence is excerpted from Sophie's World, an Norwegian novel:
Sophie lived on the outskirts of a sprawling suburb and had almost twice as far to school as Joanna.
I looked into many dictionaries, like Oxford, American Heritage, Merriam-Webster, which all list far as either an adverb or an adjective. So I think almost twice as far to school as Joanna is an adverbial phrase. I think have would usually be followed by a noun phrase in English, and this sentence is translated from Norwegian, so maybe the translator is just trying to keep the style of the original language.
But then I remember I have seen this thread(please click the link) about the 'have until X to do something' structure in English Language and Usage Community on Stackexchange. In that thread, many native speakers find 'have until X to do something' a structure correct and natural to them. Someone even provide an article by a scholar to prove it.
So I wonder whether or not this sentence had almost twice as far to school as Joanna sounds correct and natural to native English speakers?