Lets take a look at Mass. Route 2 through north-central Massachusetts. Picture below is the French King bridge. The bridge takes its name from nearby French King Rock, which was in turn named by a French army officer during the French and Indian wars of the eighteenth century. The span opened September 10, 1932. The French King bridge was constructed in 1932 to take Route 2 over the [...]
Let's take a quickie look at SR 146 from Providence, RI up to Worcester Mass. The pictures are from last weekend, when the New England spring was in full swing with budding dogwoods and hordes of people moving to Vermont. Route 146 leaves Providence as a fairly major freeway. The six lanes give way to four just as the northern suburbs are at their peak. Route 146 [...]
Construction on the destroyed US 90 bridge over the mouth of Biloxi Bay is proceeding at a rapid rate. I guess it takes a hurricane to whip the asses of the DOTs into gear. This photo from April of this year shows just how quickly the process is going. It's not China-fast, but in terms of US road construction they are going fairly quickly. AAroads has updated road photos post-Katrina [...]
Overall the Intercounty Connector (ICC) represents a $2.4 billion project to build an 18-mile long toll road between Interstates 370 in Montgomery County and Interstate 95 in Prince Georges County, Maryland. After years of representing nothing more than just a dashed line on planning maps, the first leg of the (ICC) is set to become reality as construction begins this Summer on the first segment of roadway. Five stages of [...]
Several new guides were added to Maine this weekend focusing on non-Interstate highways throughout the state from June 2005. Guides include portions of U.S. 201, U.S. 202, U.S. 1A, Maine 24, etc. These additions round out our current Maine coverage in the queue! Updates are listed at https://www.aaroads.com/updates Next in line may be finishing updates to Orlando area roads that were started in the Fall, adding additional coverage to northeastroads involving the [...]
Spent the final day, or what I thought was to be the final day, mainly around the Elkhorn vicinity of west Omaha. We also took a short drive northwest to Fremont to document the freewayization of U.S. 275 to U.S. 30. As I wrote about in a previous post, NDOR (Nebraska Department of Roads) is indeed upgrading all of U.S. 275 into a freeway from Fremont southeast to West Dodge [...]
The final day in the Twin Cities involved a spin around the metropolitan area to clinch the remaining Interstates and a dip into Wisconsin. After a few hours at our friends' apartment that afternoon, we braved peak hour traffic on the return drive to Omaha, Nebraska. Some additional photos and commentary about Twin Cities area roads: Interstate 335 was conceptualized as a connector between Interstates 94 and 35W north of [...]
Interstate 29 north approaching I-129 at Sioux City, Iowa. For those who wonder, including ourselves, as to why signs along Interstate 29 northbound at Interstate 129 reflect the spur in text, I have an answer. At first, I speculated that Iowa wanted nothing to do with Nebraska's Interstate 129. The fact of the matter is that there are signs for Interstate 129 on Interstate 29, half of [...]
Spent the morning in west Minneapolis and then headed west to Fargo and south to Sisseton, South Dakota. Heavy rains washed out the majority of the afternoon as I returned east along state highways and U.S. 12. As usual, some highlights and photos are found below. While Minnesota 100 is a full freeway now, elements of its past as a lesser route remain in the form of old [...]
Day 2 of the trip involved generally spending time in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and the associated metropolitan area. Some photos and thoughts from the day: Ramp meters on the ramp from Minnesota 100 south to I-494 west. Minneapolis-St. Paul is one of several metropolitan areas that institute the use of ramp meters. The premise of such meters is to limit the amount of merging traffic during peak [...]
