Bannered Routes That Don’t Make Sense

[roadman65]

Excluding US 90 Business in NOLA that is the most obvious misuse of a business banner, we have US 190 Business in Slidell, LA that doesn't not only serves a business district, but doesn't return to its parent at one end either. Plus the mainline it parallels travels through Downtown Slidell.

In Jacksonville, FL you have US 90 ALT that has been realigned to make no sense as an alternate route. It used to branch off its parent downtown and follow the couplet of State and Union Streets into the Arlington Expressway across the St John's River and use FL 115 to return to US 90.

Now US 90 ALT uses FL 10 from the wye east of I-95 at Beach and Atlantic and heads east to FL 115 and south on FL 115 ( it's only original alignment left) to rejoin its parent.  If you plot it on the map it makes no sense.

What bannered routes do feel need to go?

In Slidell replace US 190 Business with Spur US 190. In Jacksonville send US 90 over Alternate US 90's original alignment, as that is more direct than the current mainline. Let SR 212 and 10 replace the current US 90 and be done with it.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Missouri has a bunch of random shit, like SPUR US 50 in Smithton (pop. 500).

[TheCatalyst31]

Michigan has been turning over highways to some of its larger cities lately, which apparently includes business routes. I always assumed those were informational and didn't determine who maintained the roads, but apparently MDOT doesn't work that way. Unfortunately, they haven't done anything with the parts of the business routes outside of city limits, so there are now a few weird spur business routes that abruptly end at city limits:

I-94 Business in Kalamazoo
US 131 Business in Kalamazoo
I-196 Business in Grand Rapids

[Max Rockatansky]

I-80 Business in Sacramento never made a ton of sense after I-80 was realigned.  US 50 and CA 51 seem as though they are much more adequate sign route designations.

Probably the most bizarre I've found over the years in AZ 95D in Needles, California.  I'm not sure what the purpose of providing an out of state detour was when AZ 95 was removed from a couple local Mohave County roads.  Seems like just designating a Mohave County Route 95 would have solved the problem just fine.

[pderocco]

I-80 Business in Sacramento never made a ton of sense after I-80 was realigned.  US 50 and CA 51 seem as though they are much more adequate sign route designations.

Sure. Freeways should never be business routes because they can't actually have any businesses on them at all. And even on the frontage streets, there aren't as many businesses as there are in the central downtown streets.

[TheStranger]

I-80 Business in Sacramento never made a ton of sense after I-80 was realigned.  US 50 and CA 51 seem as though they are much more adequate sign route designations.

Sure. Freeways should never be business routes because they can't actually have any businesses on them at all. And even on the frontage streets, there aren't as many businesses as there are in the central downtown streets.

Long before Biz 80 or the Carolinas' green interstates...

Business US 50 ran with Route 17 along the then-Cypress Freeway portion of today's 880 in the 1950s/1960s (after that replaced the former two routes' original alignment along the surrounding Cypress Street/today's Mandela Parkway), before reaching city streets in downtown Oakland. 

I do get the idea of "use the freeway for like 1.5 miles to reach downtown" but I think that might have been the first business route freeway ever?  And I don't think it was ever a historic US 50 routing at all (unlike the former 40 alignment on San Pablo Avenue becoming Business US 40 once the mainline was rerouted to the Eastshore corridor).

[roadman65]

UA 1 Alternate serving Bangor, ME.  It goes out of the way to be an alternative, but I'm guessing Bangor is an important city that they wanted US 1 to serve it.

So they left the mainline as a bypass and shortcut of the city.

[WillWeaverRVA]

The complex Y intersection between US 1 and US 17 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia includes a US 17 ALT and a US 17 BUSINESS that have no real reason to exist. Neither one functions as an alternate or business route, although neither one is actually posted as such.

Virginia Beach's US 58 BUSINESS doesn't really serve much of a purpose either, especially given that Virginia Beach doesn't post it at all (the only US 58 BUSINESS postings are on overheads at the complex interchange with I-264).

[SectorZ]

UA 1 Alternate serving Bangor, ME.  It goes out of the way to be an alternative, but I'm guessing Bangor is an important city that they wanted US 1 to serve it.

So they left the mainline as a bypass and shortcut of the city.

I think it goes back to 'A/ALT' routes just being the old routing of the route in question. US 1 did serve Bangor until the Waldo–Hancock Bridge was built in 1931.

[JayhawkCO]

I-25 Business in Aguilar or I-40 Business in Radiator Springs Glenrio.

[Max Rockatansky]

I-80 Business in Sacramento never made a ton of sense after I-80 was realigned.  US 50 and CA 51 seem as though they are much more adequate sign route designations.

Sure. Freeways should never be business routes because they can't actually have any businesses on them at all. And even on the frontage streets, there aren't as many businesses as there are in the central downtown streets.

Long before Biz 80 or the Carolinas' green interstates...

Business US 50 ran with Route 17 along the then-Cypress Freeway portion of today's 880 in the 1950s/1960s (after that replaced the former two routes' original alignment along the surrounding Cypress Street/today's Mandela Parkway), before reaching city streets in downtown Oakland. 

I do get the idea of "use the freeway for like 1.5 miles to reach downtown" but I think that might have been the first business route freeway ever?  And I don't think it was ever a historic US 50 routing at all (unlike the former 40 alignment on San Pablo Avenue becoming Business US 40 once the mainline was rerouted to the Eastshore corridor).

I want to say that Pasadena requested something akin to a Business Route for US 66 as early the 1930s?  I kind of view the whole US 101A with the Bayshore Highway as the first true Business Route California.  The mainline highway being reverted to El Camino Real is explicitly stated to be for business purposes in all the AASHO notes. 

[wriddle082]

North Carolina's practice of sometimes signing unbannered, business, and bypass US routes seems a bit ridiculous, when they could easily make one of them a state route.

Smithfield has Business US 70 as the original route, unbannered US 70 for most of the bypass, and Bypass US 70 to go around the immediate developed area of the I-95 interchange (the Bypass has no interchange with I-95 while the unbannered route does).  Not to mention a nearby Alternate US 70 that branches off the developed section of US 70 near I-95, but that one is probably ok.  Anyway, Bypass US 70 will one day go away once it becomes I-42.

Elizabeth City currently also has unbannered, Business, and Bypass sections of US 17, but Bypass US 17 will one day go away when it gets redesignated as I-87.

Goldsboro did have the same three versions of US 70 that Smithfield has, but their Bypass US 70 has just recently been redesignated I-42.

And then there's Rocky Mount, which has Bypass and Business bannered sections of US 301 but no unbannered section.  And Henderson also has Bypass and Business sections of US 1 and US 158 but no unbannered sections.

I'm probably missing a few, but most of NC's issues seem to stem from building bypasses of bypasses due to lack of access control or sensible zoning regulations along the first bypass, and they're mostly in the eastern half of the state.  The western half of the state will either have a Business or Bypass section but not both at the same time.

[Mapmikey]

And then there's Rocky Mount, which has Bypass and Business bannered sections of US 301 but no unbannered section.  And Henderson also has Bypass and Business sections of US 1 and US 158 but no unbannered sections.

All business-bypass routes were posted this way in North Carolina up until ~1980 with oversize banners on each.  There are some AASHTO requests to renumber the bypass routes as unbanned mainline routes.

Shelby is likely going to join the 3 variations of a route club.

[hotdogPi]

North Carolina's practice of sometimes signing unbannered, business, and bypass US routes seems a bit ridiculous, when they could easily make one of them a state route.

I would rather have them related in some obvious way rather than e.g. (making up numbers) US 64 and NC 729. There are two ways Massachusetts does this: MA 3A is an alternate of US 3, and MA 240 parallels MA 140. (140 and 40 are unrelated, though.) Neither of these is unique to Massachusetts; IN 930 is related to US 30, and New York and Oklahoma have alphabet soup (and New Hampshire and Vermont have more reasonable multiple letters such as NH 11A through 11D).

[Molandfreak]

Michigan has been turning over highways to some of its larger cities lately, which apparently includes business routes. I always assumed those were informational and didn't determine who maintained the roads, but apparently MDOT doesn't work that way. Unfortunately, they haven't done anything with the parts of the business routes outside of city limits, so there are now a few weird spur business routes that abruptly end at city limits:

I-94 Business in Kalamazoo
US 131 Business in Kalamazoo
I-196 Business in Grand Rapids

At least 131 business has emergency route signage beyond the stub end, so it's not difficult for folks to find their way back.

[paulthemapguy]

All of them 

[NE2]

I do get the idea of "use the freeway for like 1.5 miles to reach downtown" but I think that might have been the first business route freeway ever?  And I don't think it was ever a historic US 50 routing at all (unlike the former 40 alignment on San Pablo Avenue becoming Business US 40 once the mainline was rerouted to the Eastshore corridor).

The earliest business route freeway was probably Business 1-9 in Jersey City, now NJ 139. It was created in 1934 when US 1-9 was explicitly placed on the George Washington Bridge.

[hbelkins]

None of West Virginia's signed alternate state routes make sense. They are mostly spurs that don't return to their parent route, such as ALT WV 10 in Barboursville or ALT WV 34 in Hurricane.

[freebrickproductions]

It ain't signed, but apparently College Parkway in Gadsden, AL, is designated as US 431 Bypass, despite the fact that the road dead-ends a little over a mile to the west of US 431 and US 431 Bypass only exists on the road. However, given the unfinished nature of I-759's western end and the fact that the west end of College Parkway is a pair of stubs, I suspect that it was originally intended to link-up with I-759 as part of a large bypass of US 431 around Gadsden and Attalla as a whole. Would certainly help eliminate a couple of the more awkward turns and intersections along it through that area.

[Bitmapped]

None of West Virginia's signed alternate state routes make sense. They are mostly spurs that don't return to their parent route, such as ALT WV 10 in Barboursville or ALT WV 34 in Hurricane.

WV seems to have basically treated ALT routes as for an alternate terminus. You see the same thing in action with WV 180, which used to be ALT WV 18. Now-unsigned ALT WV 72 near Kingwood is the same deal - it's the original routing, which ended at WV 26 rather than WV 7.

WV's usage is different than the unsigned SPUR routes, which just serve as connectors or Ohio River bridges.

The only (unsigned) ALT WV route that I know that connects to its parent at both ends is ALT WV 3 in Whitesville. ALT WV 27 in the Wellsburg area doesn't connect to WV 27 at all.

I'm not a fan of WV's recent adoption of BYPASS routes with US 19 in Beckley and US 522 at Berkeley Springs. Making the mainline route BUSINESS in both cases would seem to make more sense. WV doesn't use the BUSINESS designation either, other than some odd signs along ALT WV 34, although WVDOH's proposal for Corridor H's Parsons-Davis segment includes redesignated WV 32 through Thomas as BUSINESS WV 32.

[vdeane]

I'm not a fan of WV's recent adoption of BYPASS routes with US 19 in Beckley and US 522 at Berkeley Springs. Making the mainline route BUSINESS in both cases would seem to make more sense.

Maybe someone at WVDOT is on Travel Mapping and doesn't want people to lose their clinches?

[dlsterner]

I always felt that the designation "ALT US 301" for the Starke FL bypass was a bit odd.  I would have thought that it would be "BYP US 301" instead - or even better, to be main-line "US 301" and the former routing becoming "BUS US 301".

[TheCatalyst31]

I'm not a fan of WV's recent adoption of BYPASS routes with US 19 in Beckley and US 522 at Berkeley Springs. Making the mainline route BUSINESS in both cases would seem to make more sense.

Maybe someone at WVDOT is on Travel Mapping and doesn't want people to lose their clinches?

US 14 in Brookings, SD has the same setup, but it also has an I-29 Business Spur that just follows mainline US 14 for two miles, which is much sillier.

[SD Mapman]

I'm not a fan of WV's recent adoption of BYPASS routes with US 19 in Beckley and US 522 at Berkeley Springs. Making the mainline route BUSINESS in both cases would seem to make more sense.

Maybe someone at WVDOT is on Travel Mapping and doesn't want people to lose their clinches?

US 14 in Brookings, SD has the same setup, but it also has an I-29 Business Spur that just follows mainline US 14 for two miles, which is much sillier.

So the 14 mainline/bypass split has been that way for at least as long as I can remember, depending on which side of town you're on you either get defaulted onto the mainline or the bypass. There really aren't business US routes in SD.

Now the business spur is basically a TM invention. If you're driving on I-29, the business spur is very well signed for Exit 132 in both directions, but there are no signs whatsoever on US 14/6th St. Back in the old CHM days, after biking around Brookings and field-confirming everything, I sat down in a hotel room in Brookings and laid out a plan for that route. It was originally in CHM as a Business Loop, but as there was no signage anywhere I had the idea to just route it along US 14 to downtown where the old loop route turned off. That way the route stayed (since there was the obvious consistent signage along I-29) but there was no new clinched mileage in the system (since the whole length of the "spur" is concurrent with US 14). I need to talk to DOT about getting those business spur signed off the BGS's, much like I need to email them about other things...

[TheCatalyst31]

I'm not a fan of WV's recent adoption of BYPASS routes with US 19 in Beckley and US 522 at Berkeley Springs. Making the mainline route BUSINESS in both cases would seem to make more sense.

Maybe someone at WVDOT is on Travel Mapping and doesn't want people to lose their clinches?

US 14 in Brookings, SD has the same setup, but it also has an I-29 Business Spur that just follows mainline US 14 for two miles, which is much sillier.

So the 14 mainline/bypass split has been that way for at least as long as I can remember, depending on which side of town you're on you either get defaulted onto the mainline or the bypass. There really aren't business US routes in SD.

Now the business spur is basically a TM invention. If you're driving on I-29, the business spur is very well signed for Exit 132 in both directions, but there are no signs whatsoever on US 14/6th St. Back in the old CHM days, after biking around Brookings and field-confirming everything, I sat down in a hotel room in Brookings and laid out a plan for that route. It was originally in CHM as a Business Loop, but as there was no signage anywhere I had the idea to just route it along US 14 to downtown where the old loop route turned off. That way the route stayed (since there was the obvious consistent signage along I-29) but there was no new clinched mileage in the system (since the whole length of the "spur" is concurrent with US 14). I need to talk to DOT about getting those business spur signed off the BGS's, much like I need to email them about other things...

That explains a lot. I was actually in Brookings earlier this week, but I came into town from the east on US 14, and I spent the night at a hotel by the I-29/US 14 interchange. So I checked TM before actually seeing what the signage looked like, and then forgot to double-check that the business spur was actually signed, since I didn't need to go out of my way to clinch it.