KDOT looking to unload spur highways?

[bugo]

The Kansas mileage cap is retarded.  The highway system should be as many miles as it needs to be - and not some arbitrary number.

[Scott5114]

The Kansas mileage cap is retarded.  The highway system should be as many miles as it needs to be - and not some arbitrary number.

Oklahoma has a mileage cap too.

I think the purpose of a mileage cap is to prevent the situation that you have in Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, and Kentucky with random state roads spurring off into the bush and ending at some random point, possibly to serve some well-connected property owner that did a favor for someone at the DOT or in the legislature. It's a lot harder to keep roads like that in the system when they are taking up mileage that is needed for a road that actually serves a wider interest.

It's hard to see where the mileage cap has actually resulted in the Kansas highway system not serving the needs of its users. A lot of these rural highways that are being decommissioned are the same as the lettered-spur highways in Oklahoma or lettered supplemental highways in Missouri. They can easily be handled by the counties with little loss of utility for the road user.

[J N Winkler]

I suspect states with mileage caps on their primary state highway systems are more common than states that don't have them.  Kansas gets all the negative publicity because long ago, in the bad old MTR days, there were committed roadgeeks from the state that actually looked up the mileage cap in the Kansas statutes.  I don't think anyone has systematically gone through the statute books for all 50 states (are there any that aren't online now?) and checked whether mileage caps exist in each state.

BTW, I want to add my own thanks to KDOTGIS for letting us know this resource is available--I had not realized that I-235 was designated in multiple pieces.

[Alps]

Mileage caps also lead to awkward situations where routes are decommissioned through towns but not on either side, or twelve routes are shoved onto a single bypass and not even signed.

[Scott5114]

This is true...if the mileage cap is set too low, nonsensical things can easily happen. If it's set too high, it accomplishes nothing. It has to be set to a sweet spot that works for the state in question.

[Arkansastravelguy]

Probably old news but K-201, K-202, K-203 and K-224 have all been designed. I was hoping to catch a pic of a missed sign but that wasn't the case. On a similar note, why is K-7 extended to the state line concurrent with US69? Seems like wasted mileage there. Also K-102, is it there just for Big Brutis?


iPhone

[bugo]

On a similar note, why is K-7 extended to the state line concurrent with US69? Seems like wasted mileage there.

What is now US 69 in Oklahoma was once OK 7.  Perhaps this is one reason that it's still signed.  Personally, I think it should be signed to the state line because it's a major highway and a border-to-border route and it provides route continuity.  OK 9 is signed along US 59 and US 271 to end at the Arkansas line where I-540 begins for the same reason: it runs from the Texas line to the Arkansas line.  The infamous OK 3 is another example.  Some might call these "useless duplexes" but I strongly disagree.