Crossroads of your state

[D-Dey65]

Florida: Orlando

Wildwood would disagree with you on that.

No connection to the eastern coast.

See US-192, FL-528, and FL-50. Seems like pretty good connections to me.

Actually, FL 44 is the better connection to the east coast.

[sbeaver44]

Probably Harrisburg for Pennsylvania, as it's fairly center in the state, and is served by several major roads, directly or indirectly providing access to...

• Pittsburgh and Philly via the Turnpike
• Lots of places via I-81 south
• Scranton/Wilkes-Barre via I-81 north
• State College via 22/322
• York and Baltimore via I-83
• Frederick and D.C. via US 15 south
• Williamsport and ultimately Rochester via US 11/15 north
• Lancaster via PA 283
• New York City via I-78 (indirect)

I'm agreeing with you and JP on Harrisburg.  Biased bc I live here.  But the number of warehouses continues to climb, which tells me it's Harrisburg.

[SGwithADD]

I would still go with Albany, as I-87 south of Albany is more important than I-81 south of Syracuse.

Yeah.  This is compelling.

More important to the concept of a "crossroads"? Or just a more important road? I'm not aware that the two ideas are connected. A crossroads is, literally, a meeting point of roads and, idiomatically, a point of decision, where one can approach from any direction and then choose any direction to proceed. There's nothing about it that suggests to me the relative importance of the different options–the meeting and the choice are the inherent characteristics.

I'm sure there's a way to actually measure this, if you're a little handy with computer scripting. You could calculate the route between each pair of points in the state (perhaps within a certain threshold, such as a minimum population, or the center of each town or city), and then find the area where a plurality of them meet. If you could translate this script into a map, the result would probably be visually quite apparent.

Sorry for being a bit necro with this thread, but I had a thought about what empirestate mentioned. What if we consider trips between metro areas? Far from exhaustive, but I think this could capture a decent number of trips, and we can try to remove some unintended biases. Caveats: I used Google Maps to remove my own biases on routes, on a map that seems to show no traffic bottlenecks outside of NYC/lower Westchester Co. Routes were plotted only between the first principal city of an MSA (which in my experience is the main anchor city of the MSA).

I tried two things. First, looking at all MSAs in New York State, and then seeing the number of routes that go through an MSA, as well as the routes that are "direct" (i.e., you do not need to go through another New York MSA to get there). Interestingly enough, Syracuse and Albany tie (25 each, direct + through), with Binghamton coming in third (22). Syracuse has the edge with direct connections (5 vs. 4 for Albany), but Binghamton has the most direct connections in the state with 8.



Second, I repeated the MSA study, but left out the MSAs that are part of a larger consolidated area (CSA), instead using the principal CSA city. This roughly corresponds to primary statistical areas (PSAs) excluding the smaller uSAs. Here, Syracuse is a clear winner (19), followed by Binghamton (14) and Rochester (12, mostly because all Buffalo trips go through the Rochester MSA). Albany's significant drop is because it fell on the route of a lot of smaller MSA cities inside CSAs (Poughkeepsie, Kingston, Glens Falls). Again, Binghamton has the most direct connections.



Provided the individual direct and through columns in case you want to see those broken out. My method does put weight on a direct connection, so if you disagree with that, you can use the "Thru" column, which gives Albany the slight edge for MSAs and Syracuse for the PSAs.

If I continue to be bored, I might do this again, including uSAs. Curious to see what this could look like for other states.

[Daniel Fiddler]

There are more than one.  I would say, from most to least major:

Chattanooga (where I-75 and I-24 merge / diverge, depending on direction of traffic, as Tampa - Detroit and Miami - Chicago are indubitably two of the main, if not THE MAIN two truck arteries in the nation)

Nashville (as in the entire metropolitan area, if not the city proper, Murfreesboro and / or Franklin)

Knoxville (I-75 and I-40)

Memphis

Jackson (ironically, despite US 45 and US 412 not being Interstates)

Tri-Cities

Cookeville

[TheHighwayMan3561]

There are more than one.  I would say, from most to least major:

Chattanooga (where I-75 and I-24 merge / diverge, depending on direction of traffic, as Tampa - Detroit and Miami - Chicago are indubitably two of the main, if not THE MAIN two truck arteries in the nation)

Nashville (as in the entire metropolitan area, if not the city proper, Murfreesboro and / or Franklin)

I've never lived in Tennessee, but I'd think Nashville is above 'Nooga. I-65 and I-24 fill the Chicago and St. Louis quotients, plus I-40's transcontinental truck traffic.

[jlam]

In Colorado, it has to be Denver, as every interstate in the state passes through the city limits.

[SkyPesos]

There are more than one.  I would say, from most to least major:

Chattanooga (where I-75 and I-24 merge / diverge, depending on direction of traffic, as Tampa - Detroit and Miami - Chicago are indubitably two of the main, if not THE MAIN two truck arteries in the nation)

Nashville (as in the entire metropolitan area, if not the city proper, Murfreesboro and / or Franklin)

Tampa, Detroit, Miami and Chicago aren't cities in Tennessee, so they're irrelevant for this thread. Nashville is the obvious crossroads for Tennessee, with direct interstate connections to the other 4 of the 5 largest cities in the state.

[NWI_Irish96]

This may come to a complete surprise to people but the Crossroads of Indiana is Indianapolis. Mapping it out one day I saw that 65 of Indiana's 92 counties have direct highway access (via interstate, U.S. or state highway) to Marion County. Also it's the state capital, largest city and largest metro area, so there's that too.

I counted 65 that connect (66 if you include Marion itself).


These 22 that don't:

Adams, Blackford, Cass, DuBois, Elkhart, Fayette, Floyd, Jennings, Kosciusko, Lagrange
Martin, Noble, Ohio, Porter, Posey, Spencer, Sullivan, Switzerland, Union, Wabash
Warren, Whitley


Plus these 4 that don't now but will when I-69 is finished:

Daviess, Gibson, Pike, Warrick

[Flint1979]

This may come to a complete surprise to people but the Crossroads of Indiana is Indianapolis. Mapping it out one day I saw that 65 of Indiana's 92 counties have direct highway access (via interstate, U.S. or state highway) to Marion County. Also it's the state capital, largest city and largest metro area, so there's that too.

I counted 65 that connect (66 if you include Marion itself).


These 22 that don't:

Adams, Blackford, Cass, DuBois, Elkhart, Fayette, Floyd, Jennings, Kosciusko, Lagrange
Martin, Noble, Ohio, Porter, Posey, Spencer, Sullivan, Switzerland, Union, Wabash
Warren, Whitley


Plus these 4 that don't now but will when I-69 is finished:

Daviess, Gibson, Pike, Warrick

Some of those counties have routes that connect to the Indy metro area though just not to Marion County itself. Like just one example would be SR-13 which starts in Elkhart County and could actually be an extension of US-131 but it's not but anyway it ends up in Hancock County just east of Marion so it's at least still the Indy metro area.

[tdindy88]

This may come to a complete surprise to people but the Crossroads of Indiana is Indianapolis. Mapping it out one day I saw that 65 of Indiana's 92 counties have direct highway access (via interstate, U.S. or state highway) to Marion County. Also it's the state capital, largest city and largest metro area, so there's that too.

I counted 65 that connect (66 if you include Marion itself).


These 22 that don't:

Adams, Blackford, Cass, DuBois, Elkhart, Fayette, Floyd, Jennings, Kosciusko, Lagrange
Martin, Noble, Ohio, Porter, Posey, Spencer, Sullivan, Switzerland, Union, Wabash
Warren, Whitley


Plus these 4 that don't now but will when I-69 is finished:

Daviess, Gibson, Pike, Warrick

What about Vanderburgh County?

Interestingly, when I-69 is completed the number of counties connected will actually go up by just one. To just 66 counties. Since SR 37 is being eliminated between Bloomington and Indianapolis, Lawrence, Orange, Crawford and Perry Counties will all go off the list since they will no longer be connected by a single route to Marion County.

[oscar]

No one has attempted a full list yet, so based on my opinions and the opinions of others in this thread, here's mine:

Alaska: Fairbanks

Objections?

I would say Alaska has to be Anchorage.  Most of the population is in the southern part of the state.  The only other I could possibly think of would be, generically, the Mat-Su Valley, since AK1 and AK3 meet in between Wasilla and Palmer.

Also, Anchorage's international airport is the main hub for air travel within Alaska. That is particularly important for "crossroads" purposes, in a huge state with a sparse road network, and no or poor road connections to important outlying communities, most notably the state capital Juneau.

Same goes double for Hawaii and Honolulu. Honolulu is not only the focus of the highway network on Oahu island (home to about two-thirds of the state's population) even though it's in the SE corner of the island, but its international airport is the hub for travel to/from/among the state's other islands.

[empirestate]

In Colorado, it has to be Denver, as every interstate in the state passes through the city limits.

It almost certainly is Denver, though not necessarily for this reason. (If all of the US and state highways converged elsewhere, there might be another strong candidate. And in some states, the majority of Interstates pass through cities we'd all agree are not the crossroads.)

[LilianaUwU]

Québec's crossroads could either be Montréal or the eponymous Québec City.

- Montréal is the biggest city in the province, and many major Autoroutes and regular routes go either through or near the city.
- Québec City is more of a central point than Montréal, and it is the capital city. It's also the site of the easternmost bridges on the Saint Lawrence River.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Minnesota's map of counties directly reachable from MSP



Blue = 7-county metro area
Pee yellow Light green = if you consider US 169 and MN 169 to be the same route, it adds Lake County (I don't, but it's the only US/MN duplicate with any argument)

[SkyPesos]

68/88 Ohio counties are reachable from the Columbus MSA with a single route number:

[KCRoadFan]

Missouri, I believe, is a unique case, in that it has not one but two focal points, on opposite sides of the state, linked together by I-70: St. Louis and Kansas City (the latter being where I live). In terms of the main links with the rest of the country, KC "faces"  west and St. Louis east - St. Louis is Missouri's main connection to the East Coast (via I-70 and I-64), Great Lakes region (vis I-55), and the South (via I-64 and I-55). KC, on the other hand, is the main link with the West Coast (via I-70), the northern plains states and the northwest (via I-29 and, to a lesser extent, I-35), and the Southwest (via I-35, although it's also connected to St. Louis via I-44).

If one had to pick what the one most important statewide segment of interstate, regarding its role in the transportation network of the entire country, I believe I-70 in Missouri would be an excellent choice. Knowing that, it's no wonder that I've seen so many trucks along that road throughout the numerous journeys I've taken across the "Show-Me State."

[empirestate]

Missouri, I believe, is a unique case, in that it has not one but two focal points, on opposite sides of the state, linked together by I-70: St. Louis and Kansas City (the latter being where I live). In terms of the main links with the rest of the country, KC "faces"  west and St. Louis east - St. Louis is Missouri's main connection to the East Coast (via I-70 and I-64), Great Lakes region (vis I-55), and the South (via I-64 and I-55). KC, on the other hand, is the main link with the West Coast (via I-70), the northern plains states and the northwest (via I-29 and, to a lesser extent, I-35), and the Southwest (via I-35, although it's also connected to St. Louis via I-44).

If one had to pick what the one most important statewide segment of interstate, regarding its role in the transportation network of the entire country, I believe I-70 in Missouri would be an excellent choice. Knowing that, it's no wonder that I've seen so many trucks along that road throughout the numerous journeys I've taken across the "Show-Me State."

Not so different from, say, Pennsylvania, where the crossroads is probably someplace like Carlisle. In Missouri, it's sure looking like Jefferson City to me!

[SkyPesos]

Missouri, I believe, is a unique case, in that it has not one but two focal points, on opposite sides of the state, linked together by I-70: St. Louis and Kansas City (the latter being where I live). In terms of the main links with the rest of the country, KC "faces"  west and St. Louis east - St. Louis is Missouri's main connection to the East Coast (via I-70 and I-64), Great Lakes region (vis I-55), and the South (via I-64 and I-55). KC, on the other hand, is the main link with the West Coast (via I-70), the northern plains states and the northwest (via I-29 and, to a lesser extent, I-35), and the Southwest (via I-35, although it's also connected to St. Louis via I-44).

If one had to pick what the one most important statewide segment of interstate, regarding its role in the transportation network of the entire country, I believe I-70 in Missouri would be an excellent choice. Knowing that, it's no wonder that I've seen so many trucks along that road throughout the numerous journeys I've taken across the "Show-Me State."

Not so different from, say, Pennsylvania, where the crossroads is probably someplace like Carlisle. In Missouri, it's sure looking like Jefferson City to me!

Not having a 2di automatically disqualifies a city from being a crossroads of a state imo.

Also, Carlisle is a Harrisburg suburb, and it's already agreed on in this thread that PA's crossroads is Harrisburg.

[Rothman]

Missouri, I believe, is a unique case, in that it has not one but two focal points, on opposite sides of the state, linked together by I-70: St. Louis and Kansas City (the latter being where I live). In terms of the main links with the rest of the country, KC "faces"  west and St. Louis east - St. Louis is Missouri's main connection to the East Coast (via I-70 and I-64), Great Lakes region (vis I-55), and the South (via I-64 and I-55). KC, on the other hand, is the main link with the West Coast (via I-70), the northern plains states and the northwest (via I-29 and, to a lesser extent, I-35), and the Southwest (via I-35, although it's also connected to St. Louis via I-44).

If one had to pick what the one most important statewide segment of interstate, regarding its role in the transportation network of the entire country, I believe I-70 in Missouri would be an excellent choice. Knowing that, it's no wonder that I've seen so many trucks along that road throughout the numerous journeys I've taken across the "Show-Me State."

Not so different from, say, Pennsylvania, where the crossroads is probably someplace like Carlisle. In Missouri, it's sure looking like Jefferson City to me!

Not having a 2di automatically disqualifies a city from being a crossroads of a state imo.

Also, Carlisle is a Harrisburg suburb, and it's already agreed on in this thread that PA's crossroads is Harrisburg.

*reopens the issue*

Carlisle's a good one.

[MATraveler128]

Massachusetts - I-90, I-84 in Sturbridge. You could also make a case for I-90/290/395 in Worcester.

[Ted$8roadFan]

In Massachusetts, cases could also be made for I-90/I-495 (NH/ME and Cape Cod) or I-90/I-95 (North shore/South Shore to west and Boston).

[empirestate]

Not having a 2di automatically disqualifies a city from being a crossroads of a state imo.

But not to me. That's a good summary of this thread overall: more disagreement on the question than on the answer.

Also, Carlisle is a Harrisburg suburb, and it's already agreed on in this thread that PA's crossroads is Harrisburg.

Carlisle is a city in its own right, not merely a suburb. I actually lived there for a while, and it really functions as a distinct entity. This is characteristic of that area Pennsylvania–lots of inter-connected small towns and cities, and a fair few larger ones. More like a web than a hub-and-spoke.

[thspfc]

Massachusetts - I-90, I-84 in Sturbridge. You could also make a case for I-90/290/395 in Worcester.

Surely it's Boston right?

[skluth]

Missouri, I believe, is a unique case, in that it has not one but two focal points, on opposite sides of the state, linked together by I-70: St. Louis and Kansas City (the latter being where I live). In terms of the main links with the rest of the country, KC "faces"  west and St. Louis east - St. Louis is Missouri's main connection to the East Coast (via I-70 and I-64), Great Lakes region (vis I-55), and the South (via I-64 and I-55). KC, on the other hand, is the main link with the West Coast (via I-70), the northern plains states and the northwest (via I-29 and, to a lesser extent, I-35), and the Southwest (via I-35, although it's also connected to St. Louis via I-44).

If one had to pick what the one most important statewide segment of interstate, regarding its role in the transportation network of the entire country, I believe I-70 in Missouri would be an excellent choice. Knowing that, it's no wonder that I've seen so many trucks along that road throughout the numerous journeys I've taken across the "Show-Me State."

Not so different from, say, Pennsylvania, where the crossroads is probably someplace like Carlisle. In Missouri, it's sure looking like Jefferson City to me!

As someone who lived in Missouri for 30 years, there's no way it's Jeff City. It's the Crossroads for people driving to Lake of the Ozarks but that's about it. No interstates even reach Jeff City. KC and STL are the two transportation foci for Missouri. I'd even take Columbia over Jeff City as the main E-W (I-70) and N-S (US 63) corridors meet on the east side of Columbia (one of the most screwed up interchanges this side of Breezewood). But if it can't be on the edge, I agree it is the I-70 corridor. No reason a corridor can't be the crossroads.

[Strider]

For North Carolina: Greensboro. (NOT Charlotte or Statesville.)

It is the city where I-40, I-85, I-73, US 29, 70, 220 and 421 all meet. You can go basically everywhere from Greensboro.

I-40 West to Winston-Salem (meets future I-74 corridor), Statesville (meets I-77), Asheville (meets I-26), Knoxville (meets I-75), and points west. I-40 East to Durham (where I-40//I-85 split near it), Raleigh (meets future I-87 and I-42), Benson (meets I-95) Wilmington (meets U.S. 17).

I-85 South to Charlotte (meets I-77), Spartanburg (meets I-26), Atlanta (meets I-75 and I-20) and points south. I-85 North to Petersburg (meets and ends at I-95 to head to Richmond, Washington D.C., and points north)

I-73/US 220 South to Asheboro (meets I-74 near it), Rockingham (eventually split off with I-74) and eventually the I-95 corridor and Myrtle Beach. US 220 (future I-73) north to Roanoke and I-81 corridor

US 29 (I-785) northeast to Danville, Charlottesville (meets I-64) and eventually Washington DC metro (meets I-66). US 29 south provides alternative route to I-85 and points south.

US 70 East following I-40 and I-85 as an alternative route and then becomes a part of future I-42 corridor southeast to Morehead City.

US 421 (future I-685) southeast to Sanford (meets US 1), I-95 and eventually Wilmington. US 421 North (going west) to Boone, Bristol TN/VA, and points northwest.