Decomissionings/Truncations that disapponted you?

[CapeCodder]

Title.

For me, it's US 66. I understand why they did it, but why 66 and not say, US 11? or US 5? I'm even bummed out they got rid of US 99.

[Ketchup99]

None. The more pointless US routes they decommission, the better. I have a laundry list I'd like to get rid of - 5, 9 (or move 9 onto GSP), 11, 46, 206, much of 220, much of 20, much of 1, I'm sure there are more as you go further south and west...

[hotdogPi]

None. The more pointless US routes they decommission, the better. I have a laundry list I'd like to get rid of - 5, 9 (or move 9 onto GSP), 11, 46, 206, much of 220, much of 20, much of 1, I'm sure there are more as you go further south and west...

What routes would those become, though? US routes that parallel Interstates in the Northeast are fairly major routes on their own.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

61 north of St. Paul

[Ketchup99]

None. The more pointless US routes they decommission, the better. I have a laundry list I'd like to get rid of - 5, 9 (or move 9 onto GSP), 11, 46, 206, much of 220, much of 20, much of 1, I'm sure there are more as you go further south and west...

What routes would those become, though? US routes that parallel Interstates in the Northeast are fairly major routes on their own.

State routes, presumably - or maybe just normal roads. The major parts through cities could become Interstate business routes, but a US Route is supposed to, in my mind, be an important corridor in and of itself. If we take the example of US 1 in Connecticut (which I'd like to decommission), Route 1 is no longer an important corridor - I-95 is the important corridor, and US 1 is used exclusively by local traffic, not long-distance traffic. The ideal US route, in my view, would be something like US 6 from Hartford to Providence, US 13 from Wilmington to Norfolk, US 15 from Harrisburg to Frederick, or US 22 from Pittsburgh to Altoona - long-distance through routes that do not have an Interstate. If you're looking at, for instance, the corridor from Hagerstown to Harrisburg, the main route already has a number - I-81. There's no use for US 11. Same goes with my prior example, US 1 from New York to Boston - the through corridor is I-95, and the old Post Road is no longer a major through route. Not every local road with a lot of traffic is a US route, and Route 1 is an (albeit very long) local road.

[kphoger]

I think that, if an Interstate bypasses the towns along the corridor but the US Route goes through them, then the US Route still deserves its designation.

Take, for example, US-40 between Saint Louis and Terre Haute.  US-40 is the route that actually goes from town to town to town.  I-70 just bypasses them all a mile or two outside of town.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I'm not entirely in favor of eliminating sections like US 16 and 61 that have long independent sections interrupted by interstates, but those parallel roads don't need to be under state control in these parts and I don't object to relocations onto interstates. These are local roads serving local traffic. If people have to get off in an emergency, they're getting right back on the interstate at the first chance they can.

[Ketchup99]

I'm not even opposed to gaps in US Routes, if there's a long gap between two important sections of roadway. Take US 22 in Pennsylvania, for instance - the Steubenville-Pittsburgh-Hollidaysburg section is what I'd call a "major" US Route,  Hollidaysburg-Lewistown is a minor highway where the faster way is via 99 and 322, the Lehigh Valley Thruway is major, and everything else is basically local roads. So why don't we keep the western part of US 22, demote the middle section to PA 22 (to signify its lesser importance), decommission the Lewistown-Harrisburg-Allentown routing (part is concurrent with 322, part is concurrent with 78, and part is local), and then keep US 22 on the Thruway?

[SectorZ]

1st reply and the thread already got derailed. I love it here 

[NWI_Irish96]

Most of the decommissionings/truncations in Indiana disappointed me.

In Indiana, a road can't be signed as a state highway unless it's owned and maintained by INDOT. Because the state wants to focus on roads that connect cities rather than roads through cities (which is fine from a financial standpoint), there are a lot of seemingly random route endings, and there are no signed business routes.

Some of the worst:
The central IN 4 ends at the Goshen city limits rather than continuing to IN 15
IN 22 now has separate segments ending on each end of Kokomo rather than being continuous
IN 26 now has separate segments ending on each end of Lafayette rather than being continuous
IN 120 now ends at the Elkhart city limits rather than continuing to Bus US 20
IN 933 now ends at the Elkhart/St Joseph county line

[Hwy 61 Revisited]

PA 115's truncation from Easton to Brodheadsville is kinda sad. It would be nice to have a surface alternative to 33, as well as another traffic route through Easton. It could possibly be a route number for Exit 75 on I-78.

[Ned Weasel]

Title.

For me, it's US 66. I understand why they did it, but why 66 and not say, US 11? or US 5? I'm even bummed out they got rid of US 99.

This is pretty much Fictional Highways territory, but I'm disappointed they didn't just use the 66 number for the Interstate upgrade of the whole route.  It would have fit the grid just fine, but I guess they were married to the perceived importance of I-15, 40, and 55.  They could have even extended it along either what's now I-80 or the string of tollways from IL to NJ, and people probably would have been cool with that, because then you'd have a single, well known number for an LA-Chicagoland-New York-area Interstate.

A younger me would have wished they had kept US 66 and allowed it to run concurrently with the Interstates, but these days, I'd say that's a needless doubling of route shields, and now I lean toward the opinion that it's better to just let the US Highway system be gradually phased out.

[Max Rockatansky]

CA 130 being relinquished to Mount Hamilton Road.  The relinquishment agreement stipulated that San Jose would maintain signage on Alum Rock but they pretty much immediately did the opposite and tore it all down. 

[zzcarp]

Probably the first I was "disappointed" by was US 10 when it was truncated to Bay City, Michigan from Detroit. My parents and I would travel the triplex of I-75, US 23, and US 10 one or two times per summer. I know it was a hundred mile overlap with I-75, but it was cool to see US 10 end in Detroit.

I have similar feelings about the decommissioning of US 27 in Michigan (and Old 27 north of Grayling), though it was a defensible change to create US 127 as a through route.

In Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, there used to be a Highway 17B loop and spur through the city. It was signed both east-west (east of downtown) and north-south (north of downtown). The spur to the International Bridge was "directionally" signed as "bridge". I was sorry to see that route decommissioned because it was a unique business route.

In my home state of Ohio, it was the truncation of Ohio 10 from US 20 in Kipton through Oberlin to southeast of Elyria when I was a kid. I got over that.

Now my ire is towards the decommissioning of US 223 in Toledo and its new terminus at the Monroe Street exit ramp. ODOT may as well have kept the US 223 designation to downtown Toledo since they redesignated the route as an extension of State Route 51. I don't think it saved any maintenance money, and just made a two-state 3du into essentially a single-state one.

Finally, in my current state of Colorado, I'm disappointed in CDOT's decommissioning of US 85 in Colorado Springs. Specifically I'm referring to the Venetucci Blvd section where they truncated US 85 to the I-25 overpass, and the implied overlap with I-25 begins/ends there with no exit. In my view, they should have kept Venetucci on the state system and had US 85 rejoin I-25 at Lake Street.

[Takumi]

Probably made sense at the time, but VA 44 (the second one, near Richmond) being dropped just looks silly in retrospect, given the explosive growth along its corridor within the past 30 years.

[bulldog1979]

M-107. Now the highway is in danger from erosion issues, and the county road commission is going to struggle to repair it.

[texaskdog]

I'm not even opposed to gaps in US Routes, if there's a long gap between two important sections of roadway. Take US 22 in Pennsylvania, for instance - the Steubenville-Pittsburgh-Hollidaysburg section is what I'd call a "major" US Route,  Hollidaysburg-Lewistown is a minor highway where the faster way is via 99 and 322, the Lehigh Valley Thruway is major, and everything else is basically local roads. So why don't we keep the western part of US 22, demote the middle section to PA 22 (to signify its lesser importance), decommission the Lewistown-Harrisburg-Allentown routing (part is concurrent with 322, part is concurrent with 78, and part is local), and then keep US 22 on the Thruway?

I agree.  e.g. US 87 why not just have two parts of 87 instead of a several state duplex? 

[DandyDan]

When MN 110 was decommissioned, US 212 should have been extended and not MN 62. Or MN 110 should have taken over MN 62.

[Ned Weasel]

I'll add a few local ones to this list.

KS 150 in Johnson County.  A victim of Kansas's "a state route cannot lie entirely within single or multiple contiguous city limits policy" garbage.  If KDOT had better vision, this could have been made into a much better, faster-flowing arterial highway, probably with Michigan Lefts, instead of the congested conventional arterial that much of 135th Street/Santa Fe Street has become.  It could have provided a good east-west arterial to connect to the MO 150 expressway.

KS 12 in Johnson County.  Similar issue.  The arterial road between the eastern end of the Shawnee Mission Parkway freeway and I-35 could have also been designed for better flow, instead of using so many 4-phase traffic signals.  Perhaps the frontage roads could have been used for jughandles.

KS 10 in Douglas and Shawnee Counties.  Didn't this use to follow what is now US 40 between K-4 and the current K-10?  If KDOT had kept it as K-10, US 40 could have followed US 24 instead, giving US 40 a much more logical route instead of the crap routing through Lawrence.  [Fictional Highways]Although, I'd still prefer changing the number from K-10 to K-870, or maybe even K-470, making it a state-route continuation of I-470, which could then flow into the southern leg of I-435, which goes to Missouri's I-470.[/Fictional Highways]

[skquinn]

Not technically decommissioned, but US 90 through Houston, no signage from the East Loop (I-610) until you hit Katy.

As far as actually decommissioned, US 66 and the portion of US 75 that used to run south of Dallas. I fear eventually US 59 through Houston will make this list as well...

[Henry]

Three of them stick out: US 66, 99 and 91.

[kphoger]

Old US-81 north of Wichita could have remained a state highway, in my opinion, because it's still a useful link.

Between Wichita and Newton, it's still four lanes.  Northwest of Newton, it connects North Newton, Hesston, Moundridge, McPherson, and Lindsborg–all the towns I-135 bypasses.

AADT counts:
2630 = Wichita—Newton
3550 = Newton—Zimmerdale
3660 = Zimmerdale—Hesston
1700 = Hesston—Moundridge
1075 = Moundridge—Elyria
1270 = Elyria—McPherson
3215 = McPherson—Lindsborg

By way of comparison, K-17 south of Hutchinson tops out at 1630 AADT, and K-141 in Ellsworth County tops out at 490 AADT.

[X99]

MO 465. Not only did they give up on finishing the Branson Beltway, they didn't even come up with a plan to reconfigure the west end to lead directly into its new number mainline, MO 76 West. Google Maps still labels the Strip through Branson as 76 as well as the bypass, despite 76 being completely removed from the Strip except for its name.

I once came up with an idea of how the mainline could be realigned to lead old 76 directly into new 76 instead of 376 with a three-level stack interchange, but that's purely Fictional territory unless realignment is actually considered.

[Dirt Roads]

Probably made sense at the time, but VA 44 (the second one, near Richmond) being dropped just looks silly in retrospect, given the explosive growth along its corridor within the past 30 years.

Go back much further.  When I lived in the Cloverleaf area back in the mid-1980's, SR-711 Huguenot Trail (Robious Road in Chesterfield County) was well-known as the best way west from South-of-the-James. (Think SR-711 to US-522 to I-64 west).  Things improved somewhat when VA-76 Powhite Parkway opened up, if you could afford the tolls.  It wasn't until VA-288 opened up all the way to I-64 as a Super Two in the early-2000's that SR-711 started to lose its regional importance as a major thoroughfare.  But it would have been a traffic mess if it had been trailblazed as a state route. 

(Back in those days, I was more adventuresome and often took US-60 to Lexington or US-522 to VA-6 as my primary routes west.  I-64 was still 55MPH, so anything shorter was comparable time-wise, especially for a curve-hugging hillbilly from West Virginia).

[Dirt Roads]

US-21 through west-central West Virginia.  Unfortunately, two facts killed the route:  (1) I-77 in Ohio resulted in the old routing being disconnected too many times; and (2) US-21 was entirely multiplexed with other US routes south of Charleston.  But the decommissioning of US-21 north of Charleston resulted in most of the suburban growth to push down into Teays Valley (my neck of the woods).  I might be wrong, but I think that out-of-state transplants would have been equally likely to relocate north of Charleston along the I-77 corridor if it were perceived to have been a major route alongside the interstate. 

[More on this topic in the West Virginia thread].