I suspect with the increased usage of GPS/Navigation units in cars and trucks, that more and more drivers will rely upon these gadgets over anything else to get around. Not only will they help phase out the paper map industry as we know it, but eventually I see them phasing out the need for many of the signed routes that we have in our cities today. California already sort of has this attitude that unless its either a rural route or a freeway, that a state highway should not be signed otherwise. Look at the demise of State Routes 209 and 273 in San Diego, State Route 42 in Los Angeles, etc.
As more and more use GPS units, there will be less and less of a need for numbered routes in cities, as the use of street names will suffice just the same. So I expect in the coming years that more U.S. highways will be truncated or syphoned onto freeways, more and more state routes will be truncated or segmented (ala South Dakota 42 through Sioux Falls), and more and more routes will be turned over to city maintenance, leaving numbered routes outside the city or relegated to its freeway system. In the cases where its a mileage swap with the state for other projects, it will be more easily justified when the need for signed routes in cities is diminished.
I wish this were not the case, as I find following the alignment of a state or U.S. route through a city one of the more enjoyable aspects of roadding. Being relegated to a secondary route on a freeway is just about useless otherwise.
Thoughts?
The GPS still have some inconvienents, especially when it don’t know yet how to distinguish a safe area from a slum. A groups of Norwegian tourists in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil learned it the hard way
http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,28318,24710020-5014090,00.html
http://jalopnik.com/5101044/gps-attempts-to-kill-norwegian-tourists-in-brazil
http://www.smh.com.au/news/digital-life/mp3-players/articles/is-gps-a-lost-cause/2008/12/06/1228584626582.html
The numbered highways still have some use for these cases.
Large segments of US6 here in CO parallel I-70 and I-76. While I don’t see CDOT ever giving us Biz70 in Grand Jct, I see a time where every segment of US6 that is not either a freeway (6th Ave in metro Denver) or a separate segment (east of Sterling) altogether will get turned back to the cities/counties. Especially if CDOT is in a position to increase capacity in some form on I-70.
While GPS ownership is growing at a steady rate, it’s not exactly as common in cars as A/C. Over time signage of routes may not matter as much, but I think it’s going to be some time before that happens.
I have noticed that people refer to a road more by it’s number when they are talking about taking it for a long distance or in a rural area. However, in town minor state routes are generally referred to by their name and not their number.
If the GPS does become ubiquitous, then I wonder if you will see no more ITS systems being built since motorists will be able to see statuses of routes in their own vehicle.
This is an interesting post — in 2006, I flew into Portland from where I had been living for the past 8 years (WV), and did a road trip through to Vancouver. A couple of months later I flew back home to where I am now, Brisbane, Australia.
Ok — so I picked up a rental at the airport, and noticed it had a GPS unit — I had not used one in the past, but figured it might come in handy. I had to good old road map as well, and of course could rely pretty much on road signage.
The GPS was useful for finding gas stations etc, but at one point I realised that perhaps they weren’t the be all, end all of driving assistance tools.
We (I met a couple of Aussie friends in Portland for the road trip) were somewhere along the coast in Oregon and all of a sudden the GPS alerted us to the fact that it thought we were in the Pacific Ocean. looking at the screen, yes it had us situated some miles offshore — my guess is that the constant driving through areas with a high tree density caused it to lose the satellite contact.
Here in Brisbane I do occasionally use a GPS — but am aware that it will NEVER replace the good old sign post.
I’ve enjoyed looking at your postings — there’s a lot to view and I’ll do some of that over the coming months.
Cheers!
Kim Austin
Consider how confusing it gets when multiple routes (state or U.S.) are multiplexed with an Interstate or other freeway. Freeways have gotten wide enough with closely spaced interchanges such that we need simpler guide signs to get travelers around. Having three or four routes on one highway (think North Carolina) defeats that purpose.
I personally see no issue with leaving the numbered routes on their original alignments. People will use a highway whether it is numbered 85, 40, 70, 220, 29 or anything else.
New Jersey has a long stretch of U.S. 202 that the state does not maintain, so I do not see ending maintenance as a good reason for rerouting a numbered route either.
Although, there is an element of entertainment looking for leftover route markers for recently rerouted routes. . .
While I’m not opposed to GPS, I frankly prefer the old fashioned road map myself.
There’s more to the removal of surface-street state highways in California than just the rise of GPS units. First, we have a major maintenance glut in the state, with there not being enough money to fund regular maintenance. If a route ceases to be a state highway, then the state can spend the money on other things (not always on transportation).
Second, many cities are requesting relinquishment of state highways in their communities, so that they can implement various beautification and multimodal improvements that Caltrans either won’t accept or takes a very long time to approve.
The larger cities, though, are not always advocating relinquishment. Take California 2, for example. Beverly Hills had Caltrans relinquish the section within its boundary, but Los Angeles has left California 2 to Caltrans.
GPS systems are becoming more popular, but they’re not ubiquitous. For instance, how will someone on a motorcycle use one of those things?
Even if everyone is using a GPS map, road signs are going to stick around at least in some form for many years to come -in part over legal/liability reasons.
Technology also needs electricity. Technology breaks. Someone out in the middle of nowhere whose in-car GPS system goes on the fritz will need street signs and trailblazer markers to keep him on the right path.