Lowest route number not used for a freeway?

[empirestate]

Does it have to be signed? Because if not, then AL 2 might count as it doesn't even touch a freeway (other then the very eastern end of I-565 and where it crosses over I-65).

Doesn't matter though, because I-2 is a freeway, so the number 2 is already covered. The lowest number we need to even consider is 48, followed by 102, if I'm keeping track correctly.

[SD Mapman]

I think it might be 48.

[Thing 342]

OK-102 overlaps with I-40 for a couple miles near Shawnee: http://goo.gl/maps/CInyN

[hotdogPi]

I think it might be 48.

That's what I think, too. Can someone confirm it?

[TXtoNJ]

TX-48 is fully grade separated between Vermillion Rd and Cantu Rd outside of Brownsville, a distance of 2.4 miles. Does that count?

[oscar]

TX-48 is fully grade separated between Vermillion Rd and Cantu Rd outside of Brownsville, a distance of 2.4 miles. Does that count?

Looks like just two closely-spaced interchanges, on a highway with lots of at-grade crossings west and east of those interchanges. My personal rule of thumb is that you need at least three interchanges, with no intervening at-grades, to be a "freeway".

IMO, borderline at best.

[odditude]

TX-48 is fully grade separated between Vermillion Rd and Cantu Rd outside of Brownsville, a distance of 2.4 miles. Does that count?

Looks like just two closely-spaced interchanges, on a highway with lots of at-grade crossings west and east of those interchanges. My personal rule of thumb is that you need at least three interchanges, with no intervening at-grades, to be a "freeway".

IMO, borderline at best.

according to Wikipedia, US 48 has freeway sections.

[NE2]

according to Wikipedia, US 48 has freeway sections.

PS: Wikipedia doesn't say US 48 has freeway sections.

[silverback1065]

0 is never used

[hotdogPi]

0 is never used

From the first post:

Positive integers only, and United States only.

[Kacie Jane]

Though if this were the lowest number never used for a freeway, 48 would fail.  IIRC (I have a bad habit of like half-remembering historical trivia), the current US 48 is the third one; the second one is now I-68.  Presumably some or all of it was freeway before black and white signs were replaced with red and blue ones.

[froggie]

Though if this were the lowest number never used for a freeway, 48 would fail.  IIRC (I have a bad habit of like half-remembering historical trivia), the current US 48 is the third one; the second one is now I-68.  Presumably some or all of it was freeway before black and white signs were replaced with red and blue ones.

Correct.  The "National Freeway" was constructed in segments as a full freeway and signed as US 48.  It wasn't until completion (or thereabouts) that it became I-68.

[odditude]

according to Wikipedia, US 48 has freeway sections.

PS: Wikipedia doesn't say US 48 has freeway sections.

you're right, it says "expressway" and "controlled-access" - which i misinterpreted as "freeway."

[oscar]

according to Wikipedia, US 48 has freeway sections.

..

PS: Wikipedia doesn't say US 48 has freeway sections.

you're right, it says "expressway" and "controlled-access" - which i misinterpreted as "freeway."

"Controlled-access" usually means "freeway" ("expressway", not necessarily). But while US 48 has interchanges here and there, it has no sections where there are multiple interchanges and no at-grade intersections between them, so there is nothing consistently freeway-grade. 

US 48 has a "Freeway Ends 1 Mile" sign near its current western end. However, that sign immediately follows an at-grade intersection. True, that one-mile "freeway" section has an overpass, and an interchange at its west end, but IMO that doesn't make it a "freeway" by any reasonable definition. I don't think the next phase of construction, extending US 48 further west, will change that situation, since AIUI there will be no new interchanges added before the highway reconnects with WV 93 at an at-grade intersection west of the Mt. Storm power plant.