I-35 mileage begins at the border

[NE2]

Google Street View shows milepost 1 on the southbound side at Callaghan Street (just after exit 1A). But it's only 1/2 mile to the end of I-35, while continuing straight to the bridge gives almost exactly a mile.

More interestingly, TXDOT's mileage figures for I-35 and I-35E in their Highway Designation File, compared with the location of milepost 504 (1/2 mile south of Oklahoma), appear to show that the bridge approach one-way pair is officially I-35.

[vdeane]

It does look like I-35 was intended to go there.

[roadman65]

The park in the middle of the one way pair, might of been intended for the freeway to go to the border.  Maybe, TxDOT is waiting for Mexico to continue its toll road freeway to the Rio Grande?

[kphoger]

Maybe, TxDOT is waiting for Mexico to continue its toll road freeway to the Rio Grande?

If they were years ago, they're not anymore.  The Mexican plan for a freeway to the border in recent years was to connect at the Colombia bridge, 20 miles or so upriver from Laredo.  However, it instead connects to Bridge III, which is for commercial vehicles only.  The road was built as a type A2 highway, and is currently being widened to a freeway (I assume it's entire length, though only about a third of it is complete).

More to the topic, is there any END 35 signage as one heads south?

[austrini]

IIRC, there are just end freeway signs.

[agentsteel53]

type A2 highway

is that the correct term for a road which is striped as two-lanes-with-shoulders but allows for three-wide in passing situations?

does such a road have to have dashed shoulder lines?  I've seen the occasional three-wide passing on a road with solid shoulder lines, but it is much more common when the shoulder line is dashed.

[texaskdog]

they gotta wait for Spain to agree to build it

[kphoger]

type A2 highway

is that the correct term for a road which is striped as two-lanes-with-shoulders but allows for three-wide in passing situations?

does such a road have to have dashed shoulder lines?  I've seen the occasional three-wide passing on a road with solid shoulder lines, but it is much more common when the shoulder line is dashed.

I believe the A2 designation refers to the roadway design, regardless of striping.  I have specifically in mind the new Libramiento Norponiente de Saltillo (Saltillo northwestern bypass), which not only has solid shoulder lines but also rumble strips adjacent to the lines.  Leading up to its construction and opening, this highway was consistently referred to as a type A2 highway in news articles, SkyscraperCity forums, etc.  I've never read of any distinction in terminology between the two.

Other highways come to mind also, especially farther south–specifically Coatzacalcos—Tuxtla Gutiérrez and Tehuacán—Oaxaca–but both of these use a mix of dashed and solid shoulder lines.  Ideally, using the shoulder to pass is expected with dashed lines but not solid lines; however, this is neither consistently applied during construction nor consistently adhered to while driving.

they gotta wait for Spain to agree to build it

GRIN 

[lordsutch]

If I had to guess, IH 35's mileage extends to the Lincoln-Juarez bridge because co-signed US 81 started there, so IH 35 inherited the mileage even after US 81 was decommissioned.  The big space in the middle exists because IH 35 runs through the middle of the street grid.

Incidentally the last mile or so of IH 35 south of Park Street actually was built well after the rest of the interstate (1980s I think).  There may have been pie-in-the-sky plans to extend it further south, but as a practical matter until Bridge IV/III (depending on who's counting) was built in the last decade the real bottleneck was Mexican customs southbound, not the Matamoros/Houston one-way pair, and even today except during Paisano season I've never seen traffic backed up more than 8-10 cars deep at the end of the freeway (and that's due to slamming straight into the Victoria Street light at the end).