State highways with the most variance

[CtrlAltDel]

CA-23 goes from this


to this


in just a few miles.

[kurumi]

CT 25 looks like this in Brookfield: (2 lanes, no shoulders, eponymous speed limit): https://goo.gl/maps/pRUQBFZJiHwzgJun8

... and this in Bridgeport: (10 lane freeway, for a short stretch): https://goo.gl/maps/rMsZBvR9S6zJd5a18

[TheStranger]

A few shorter California examples:

Route 92: winding rural road between Half Moon Bay and I-280, then a freeway from I-280 all the way to I-880 in Hayward, including the San Mateo Bridge.

After the freeway segment ends, it becomes Jackson Street, a suburban arterial, all the way to the east terminus at Route 185/Route 238.

Route 35 (mostly named Skyline Boulevard): One-lane section is the start of the road near Santa Cruz, then winding two-lane road for much of southern San Mateo County.  At the Route 92/I-280 junction, 35 hops on to 280 (on a corridor that was originally pre-1964 Route 5), then departs 280 as an undivided boulevard for a bit, with a four-lane section from Sneath Lane to Westborough Boulevard.  Then a two-lane but winding suburban road to Hickey Boulevard, then a one-exit freeway between there and Westmoor Avenue, followed by a divided four-lane expressway from there into San Francisco.  The final segment (Sloat Boulevard) is a landscaped suburban boulevard with 35 terminating at Route 1 near Stern Grove.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

OH-315 goes from six-lane freeway in downtown Columbus to rural two-lane road.

I'd say Ohio 7 would fit this idea better than Ohio 315.

[Gnutella]

PA 28 is a controlled-access urban highway from the city of Pittsburgh to Blawnox, a controlled-access suburban highway from Blawnox to Freeport, a controlled-access rural highway from Freeport to Kittanning, and a two-lane rural highway from Kittanning to Brockway.

[NWI_Irish96]

IN 37 and IN 67 are still considered to be continuous routes that are concurrent with I-465 around Indy, so those two would win for Indiana. Both have very rural, lightly traversed segments at each end of the state.

Once I-69 is finished, I believe that IN 37 is going away between Bloomington and Fishers.

[roadman65]

In Florida, US 19 has variance. It's starts off semi rural in Manatee County, crosses Tamp Bay, becomes an urban arterial, suburban arterial, suburban freeway, back to suburban arterial, semi rural road north of Weeki Wachee, some more suburban in Citrus County before extremely rural in Levy County cutting through forests with a 23 mile long straightaway from north of Lebanon to Chiefland and then rural with mix of forests and farms all the way into Georgia.

[Dough4872]

Pennsylvania Route 309 varies from a two-lane undivided rural road in Wyoming County to a four-lane suburban freeway in Montgomery County.

[dantheman]

My votes:

NY: NY 22. Industrial truck route in the Bronx, two-lane city street in Mount Vernon, four-lane undivided through residential areas in Scarsdale, and a couplet of three-lane one-way streets in downtown White Plains. Then more undivided four-lane, a short four-lane divided highway with stoplights around NY 120 and I-684, a two-lane road through quiet suburbs through the rest of Westchester County, and a very brief freeway overlap north of I-84. Eventually turns into a windy, hilly two-lane highway in Columbia County... and that's barely halfway through the route. Throw in a small-town main street in Hoosick Falls and Whitehall and a sixties(?)-era two-lane bypass of Ticonderoga. For a while, it topped it all off by ending at an international border crossing.

MA: It's hard to beat MA 2. Windy mountain road on both sides of North Adams, quick two-lane segments on either side of Greenfield, some super-2, four-lane freeways of various quality (from old & windy around Fitchburg/Leominster to interstate-standard on the I-91 overlap), four-lane expressway with stoplights between 495 and 95, eight-lane expressway coming into Cambridge, Memorial Drive, a random bunch of poorly-marked city streets south of the BU Bridge, and the grand finish down Commonwealth Ave in Boston.

[therocket]

CA-1 for obvious reasons

Also CA-39 (Urban boulevard to 2-lane mountain highway)

[chrisg69911]

NJ 17 starts as a 2 lane downtown street
https://maps.app.goo.gl/4KriTKpXnrKJZ2m69

Turns into a stroad highway thing
https://maps.app.goo.gl/gH8wDDB7m1rt156r7

And then a real highway when it's with 287 https://maps.app.goo.gl/tB2dTRtJoB9tZvHQ7

[WillWeaverRVA]

Pennsylvania Route 309 varies from a two-lane undivided rural road in Wyoming County to a four-lane suburban freeway in Montgomery County.

I believe PA 147 does the same thing.

[JayhawkCO]

I suppose I'll put this here, and if mods deem necessary, we can split it off to a different thread. I was taking a look at the Colorado AADT data, and I wanted to figure out, strictly from a traffic volume perspective, which routes gained the most/least traffic in their travels. I'll put the top few by category:

Interstates

Highest Variance

Highway	Lowest AADT	Highest AADT	Gain in %
I-25	11,000	285,000	2,491%
I-70	9,100	216,000	2,274%
I-76	8,200	84,000	924%

Lowest Variance

Highway	Lowest AADT	Highest AADT	Gain in %
I-225	145,000	180,000	24%
I-270	78,000	105,000	35%

US Routes

Highest Variance

Highway	Lowest AADT	Highest AADT	Gain in %
US36	420	164,000	38,948%
US24	140	45,000	32,043%
US160	140	39,000	27,757%

Lowest Variance

Highway	Lowest AADT	Highest AADT	Gain in %
US84	1,400	4,500	221%
US491	2,800	14,000	400%
US350	350	2,300	557%

State Highways

Highest Variance

Highway	Lowest AADT	Highest AADT	Gain in %
CO78	110	17,000	15,355%
CO141	170	19,000	11,076%
CO96	360	29,000	7,956%

Lowest Variance (Only Including Routes > 5 Miles)

Highway	Lowest AADT	Highest AADT	Gain in %
CO56	7,000	7,700	10%
CO113	1,300	1,500	15%
CO389	100	120	20%

[index]

If we want to do multi-state routes, SC/GA SR/NC 28 has a lot of variance. It is a backroad in all three major regions of the Southeastern Atlantic - the Coastal Plain (albeit barely, just a mile and a half after the fall line into SC), Piedmont, and Blue Ridge, a major suburban stroad, urban freeway, and viaduct in Augusta, as well as an urban city street there. It is a suburban arterial from Anderson to Clemson, a mountain expressway briefly in NC, and it is in two different states a multi-segmented route. On two occasions it parallels major reservoirs, and it has both very twisty and very straight segments.

[Quillz]

Having just driven CA-245 yesterday, I was surprised at how much variance it has. I've driven it before but this time, I realized it's one of the few south-north California state highways to transition from the Central Valley into the Sierra. (Almost all the routes that do this are west-east). As a result of this, it's a rather strange route. Starts off as a series of pretty standard Central Valley roads. But almost immediately after the CA-201 junction, it enters the Sierra foothills and becomes very twisty and fairly steep. It never changes from two lanes, but it's another example of a single route that feels like two distinct ones.

[-- US 175 --]

I'm not sure which one I'd pick in TX, as several of the highways go through various transitions.

* TX 87, starts as a multi-lane street in Galveston that takes over after I-45's southern terminus at a traffic light.  After going through the middle of town and a brief look at the shore of the Gulf, the pavement ends where traffic boards the Bolivar Ferry, which traverses the channel from Galveston Bay into the Gulf of Mexico.  Back to land at Port Bolivar, TX 87 resumes on pavement near more Gulf shoreline.  At High Island, TX 87 disappears due to erosion and past hurricane damage (TxDOT has not yet done anything about replacing the road east of High Island, or put up any signage as a detour or permanent rerouting.).  Further down the shore, it reappears before Sabine Pass, then starts to orient itself northward through coastal towns and cities until after leaving Orange and passing I-10. TX 87 becomes a much more rural 2-lane road afterward between the Big Thicket and the Sabine River.  After several towns, it ends in the piney woods of deep east Texas.

* TX 114, one of the longer ones, starts off in the rural south plains, then through urban streets in Lubbock, then overlapped with US 82 through several counties while transitioning from breaks in the caprock to the very rural Big Country.  As it encounters the DFW area, it goes from 2-lane to 4-lane into the suburbs, becoming a freeway by the time it reaches Roanoke, adding tolled express lanes as it passes DFW Airport, ending as a freeway in Irving. 

I haven't been on either one, but 2 of TX' longest state highways, TX 6 and TX 16, are bound to have much in the way of transitions, simply due to their length.

[jeffandnicole]

US 130 in NJ, from south to north:

2 lane roadway in several older downtown settings: https://goo.gl/maps/bvGgnrCPAzaLnsc87
Then a 2 & 4 lane rural roadway.
Then a concurrency with the 6 lane I-295.
After breaking off its concurrency and a short, quieter section, and after a few circles, becomes mainly a 6 lane, heavily used suburban/urban roadway. The 6 lanes are undersized in width, with many areas featuring lanes as narrow as 10 foot wide and no shoulder. https://goo.gl/maps/maJ3J36FS75KVdtA6
Further north, it settles down to a 4 lane roadway, relatively calm, until it gets close to its terminus with US 1.

Other NJ examples:

NJ Turnpike, the State Road Portion:  Starts as 4 lane roadway at Interchange 1.  Ends as 12 lane roadway at Interchange 6 where it becomes I-95.

Garden State Parkway:  Starts as a 4 lane generally quiet, tree-lined roadway at Interchange 0.  Widens to 12 or so lanes with  Express/Local roadways. Becomes 15 lane roadway at around the Raritan Bridge area.  Continues as a heavily travelled urban roadway in North Jersey around 10 lanes wide.  Ends as a 4 lane roadway approaching NY and the NY Thruway.

[flan]

No real great answers for North Dakota. I would say ND 200, which goes from the badlands in the western part of the state through the Missouri Plateau and drift prairie to the Red River Valley in the east. I-94 is slightly more varied because it also goes through Bismarck and Fargo.

[JustDrive]

I-580. Starts off as a connector to the Richmond bridge via San Quentin, then it turns into a major urban freeway through Berkeley and Oakland, then smoothly transitions into a suburban freeway in Pleasanton with exits spread out pretty far, then climbs up Altamont Pass before becoming a rural four-lane freeway for the final 15 miles.

[frankenroad]

OH-315 goes from six-lane freeway in downtown Columbus to rural two-lane road.

and does so in less than 15 miles.

[JKRhodes]

Seeing mention of US routes, I submit two in Arizona:

US 60 begins as a two lane rural highway, transitioning into a divided highway, then 6 lane boulevard. It gets routed over two interstates before breaking off through the east suburbs of Phoenix as an urban freeway with up to 5 GP lanes + 1 HOV + merge lanes in each direction crossing two freeways at fully directional interchanges. In Apache Junction, it transitions back to a 4 lane divided highway. East of Superior it goes back to two lanes with occasional passing lanes and a steep, beautiful canyon drive between Globe and Show Low. After Show Low it goes back to a two lane highway, for the most part, until the NM state line. Elevation ranges from just under 1100' above sea level in Phoenix to about 8000' near Springerville.

US 191 begins near the US/Mexico border heading north as a two lane rural highway then joins I-10 east for several miles before branching off to the north toward Safford. It joins US 70 for 10 miles before branching off to the northeast for 23 miles and coming to a stop sign at "three way."  From there to the hill south Clifton, it's a Virginia twinned 4 lane expressway. Speed limit drops to 25 in Clifton and enters a temporary easement primarily through mining property as it snakes up to and through Morenci, winding around the pits and rock piles of the mine. After the mine, it becomes a remote and rugged two lane mountain road with over 400 curves making its way toward Alpine and Springerville. From there it goes north to the Utah border passing through several small towns and joining several other routes briefly along the way. Elevation ranges from 2900 ft above sea level in Safford to 9400' at Hannagan's Meadow

[Occidental Tourist]

CA-2: Four-lane undivided urban street to six-lane and eight-lane divided and undivided urban boulevard back to four-lane undivided urban boulevard to eight-lane mostly depressed urban freeway to six-lane urban boulevard again back to eight-lane freeway again, this time mostly elevated and going from suburban to exurban, back to four-lane undivided street, this time suburban, then to two-lane mountain road.

[JREwing78]

Hwy 26 in Wisconsin is highly variable, going from 2-lane city street to 4-lane un-divided city street to 5-8 lane city boulevard to 4-lane freeway to a narrow twisty 2-lane to a high-grade 2-lane with passing lanes. Terrain ranges from flat farmland to rolling hills to more marshy areas.

Hwy 29 has similar variations, spanning the gamut from a local 25 mph city street to 8-lane freeway, and pretty much whatever in-between. Ditto for Hwy 11 as it crosses the state.