Shortest highway you've been on without clinching

[wxfree]

Farm to Market Road 2951 is a 3.7 mile dead-end spur on a peninsula of Possum Kingdom Lake.  I've been on it several times to get to hiking trails in the hills over the lake, but I've never been to the end.  I think it's the shortest state highway I've been on without clinching.  I've never gone to the end because that section is useful only for access to homes, picnic tables, and a boat ramp, which I have no interest in visiting.  What other examples are there?  And what keeps you from going to the far end?

[SkyPesos]

For the shortest 2di I've been on, it's I-66. Been on the section between VA 110 and VA 267.

EDIT: My shortest unclinched state route is OH 450, which is about a mile long. Only been on the portion between I-275 and US 50, while the 450 designation actually continues a bit west of I-275 to end at Milford city limits border.

[CoreySamson]

Mine is probably the second section of AR-283, which is a short, 1.14 mile spur connecting I-30 to the tiny town of Friendship. The only reason I've been on it is to stop at the gas station at the I-30 exit across the road. Frankly, it would be dumb to clinch now because literally all it does is lead to a small town I have no interest in visiting that happens to be 400 miles away, plus the gas station was pretty crappy.

[hotdogPi]

NH 155A, very closely followed by MA/NH 286.

[GenExpwy]

I think I've been on the shortest New York route, NY 437 (0.3 mile) without clinching it.

My father was from the Auburn area, and once a year we would go out there for a day to visit relatives. It's been a half century, but I seem to remember that an aunt lived in one of the two houses on that street.

[Rothman]

I-110 in Texas = .8 out of 1.13 miles clinched.

I-H3 = 8.81 out of 15.29 miles clinched

Not counting the Mount Airy section of I-74 in NC...(4.92 out of 16.89...I believe that's the concurrency with I-77)

I-35E in MN (meh), 28.3 out of 39.68 miles clinched.  Or I-35W in MN, 33.19 out of 42 miles clinched (still meh)

Ah, I-86 in Idaho: 4.56 out of 63.6 miles clinched.  That's better.

Forget State or U.S. Highways.  I've traveled on too many back roads to even begin to think of that one.

[Rothman]

I think I've been on the shortest New York route, NY 437 (0.3 mile) without clinching it.

My father was from the Auburn area, and once a year we would go out there for a day to visit relatives. It's been a half century, but I seem to remember that an aunt lived in one of the two houses on that street.

Never left the house in the other direction?  Interesting.

[GenExpwy]

I think I've been on the shortest New York route, NY 437 (0.3 mile) without clinching it.

My father was from the Auburn area, and once a year we would go out there for a day to visit relatives. It's been a half century, but I seem to remember that an aunt lived in one of the two houses on that street.

Never left the house in the other direction?  Interesting.

Of course I was just a kid, mother was driving. She was familiar with NY 3438 and had no reason to take NY 3838A back to the same places, and back then I didn't realize the utmost importance of clinching.

Edit to fix route numbers

[Rothman]

I think I've been on the shortest New York route, NY 437 (0.3 mile) without clinching it.

My father was from the Auburn area, and once a year we would go out there for a day to visit relatives. It's been a half century, but I seem to remember that an aunt lived in one of the two houses on that street.

Never left the house in the other direction?  Interesting.

Of course I was just a kid, mother was driving. She was familiar with NY 34 and had no reason to take NY 38 back to the same places, and back then I didn't realize the utmost importance of clinching.

Clinching or not, I've used NY 437 as part of a bypass of sorts around Auburn.

[Dirt Roads]

Ahh, somewhere in the land of cutouts is the famous VA-188 in Clifton Forge, Virginia (clinched 0.1 miles, total 0.91 miles). 

Back in the late 1980s, Ridgeway Street (US-60) was closed for utility work for several months.  The detour was comprised of staying on Main Street, left on Keswick Street and left of Roxbury Street to return to Ridgeway.  I was working out of Clifton Forge about 25% of my time during that Summer, so amazingly I only did this both ways a few times.  But when the road was open, I was known to wander that way to try to hit the Dairy Queen on the west side of town.  Sometimes too busy, sometimes closed for the season, but I never did get a chance to eat there.

[1995hoo]

I don't have the time nor the patience to sort through all of my Travel Mapping data for every jurisdiction, but TRUCK US-60 in Clifton Forge, Virginia, has to be near the top of the list, assuming auxiliary routes count for purposes of this poll. I've travelled 0.08 miles of the 0.26-mile route. Reason for not clinching–we were following VA-188 to Sulphur Springs Road to head over the mountain to the Homestead and we had a dinner reservation that prevented any further exploring, so bearing left to that last piece of the truck route wasn't an option due to lack of time.

[Skye]

Any officially designated routes: OH 129 Alt (Sidney, OH)-clinched 0.13 of 0.44 miles
Interstates/Expressways: I-190 (O'Hare Airport Connector)-clinched 1.38 of 2.61 miles

[bassoon1986]

I haven't checked other states on Travel Mapping yet, but in Louisiana I have only driven a portion of LA 3014 which is 0.58 miles total. There are quite a few shorter LA route but I've either driven them totally or not at all.


iPhone

[JayhawkCO]

Looks like my shortest is PA715 Truck in Tannersville.

They route it over I-80 for a portion of it, so I've only been on the concurrency.

1.9 miles.

Chris

[NWI_Irish96]

If you track your travels on travelmapping, you can click on "Browse the top stats" from your user page to get a list of highways you're closest to clinching. Makes this exercise easy.

UT 268 is 0.76 miles and I'm missing 0.17 miles of it.

[GaryV]

For highways in Michigan, it would most likely be M-75, about 12 1/3 miles.  I've been on the southern leg to Boyne Falls, but not the northern leg to Walloon Lake.

It's quite possible that I've been on a shorter route in another state that I didn't clinch.

[US 89]

UT 268 is 0.76 miles and I'm missing 0.17 miles of it.

That's because Utah has an annoying habit of not ending some state highways at freeway interchanges but extending them barely past it to the next intersection... and most of the time, those extensions are even signed.. The same problem affects UT 34, UT 92, and probably a few more that don't immediately come to mind.

[paulthemapguy]

CT337 is under 5 miles long, and I only used a piece of it to get to see a lighthouse.

RI-37 is only 3.17 miles long, and I only used part of it.

WV-527 is 2.82 miles long, and I only used it to cross the Ohio River.

What probably takes the cake is MI-212, which I only drove a few hundred feet of in order to get a photo of the westbound reassurance marker and turn around. MI-212 is 3/4 of a mile long.

[Dirt Roads]

WV-527 is 2.82 miles long, and I only used it to cross the Ohio River.

How about a technicality?  I've clinched WV-527, both in its entirety and also in various reroutings approaching the Eighth Street underpass.  But it was "unclinched" when the new Fifth-and-a-Half Street Bridge (Robert C. Byrd Bridge) was completed in 1994.  And I believe that the approach to the Eighth Street underpass has changed back to an older arrangement, which officially "unclinches" some more.  Out of the 2.82 miles, about 0.6 mile is now unclinched.  I'm sure I've got more of these somewhere.

[Michael]

I think I've been on the shortest New York route, NY 437 (0.3 mile) without clinching it.

My father was from the Auburn area, and once a year we would go out there for a day to visit relatives. It's been a half century, but I seem to remember that an aunt lived in one of the two houses on that street.

Never left the house in the other direction?  Interesting.

Of course I was just a kid, mother was driving. She was familiar with NY 34 and had no reason to take NY 38 back to the same places, and back then I didn't realize the utmost importance of clinching.

Since the houses are so close to the eastern end, I'm not sure which one would be more ridiculous: approaching and leaving from the west end since you'd get all but the eastern few hundred feet, or approaching from the east end since you'd only get that few hundred feet!  Even as a little kid, I thought it was silly to use a number for such a short route.  On a side note, I've clinched it by bicycle, and maybe 50% of it by foot.

As for the original topic, this summer, I used 160 feet of NY 257, which is 3.82 miles long.  Coming home from Oneida, NY 5 was closed because of an accident at the Onondaga/Madison county line.  I (along with several other cars) tried to use the nearby cul-de-sac to get around, but that didn't take traffic past the accident.  I turned around and was going to take NY 173 to NY 175 to US 20 to get home (which I had considered doing before I first got to NY 173 but didn't).  I took a side street in Chittenango to try to get to NY 173 without having to go all the way to it's intersection with NY 5, but ended up on Salt Springs Rd.  Since I knew that would take me into Fayetteville, I just used that.  At its western end, there's a one-way ramp, so I had to use a short segment of NY 257 to get back on NY 5.

[Jim]

Going off what's TM-mappable and at its limited resolution, my leader is FL 470.  I've claimed just the part east of I-75, for a little less than half of its less than half a mile length.  It's certainly possible on some trip I stopped at one of the businesses on the west side and got a bit more, but it seems doubtful that I've gone "all the way" to its transition to CR 470 toward Lake Panasoffkee.

[dlsterner]

MD 725 in Upper Marlboro, MD.  Its length is only 1.78 miles, but I still need 0.57 miles for a clinch (68% clinched).

It's a former alignment of MD 4 until it was bypassed sometime in the 1960's.  Don't have any confirmation, but it looks like it could have been an old alignment of US 301 as well.

If it ever bothers me, it would be pretty convenient to clinch.

[epzik8]

MD 30 Business in Hampstead, Maryland

[1995hoo]

If you track your travels on travelmapping, you can click on "Browse the top stats" from your user page to get a list of highways you're closest to clinching. Makes this exercise easy.

UT 268 is 0.76 miles and I'm missing 0.17 miles of it.

Thanks, I had never clicked that link on Travel Mapping and had no idea that existed. It still requires some looking through to figure out which route is the shortest. But it's interesting to see that the overall route I am closest to clinching is one where I have 0.07 mile of the entire 0.49-mile route remaining–and sort of maddening to know that the odds are I'll never clinch it, as the road in question is the A4289 in Swindon and the only reason I was on it at all was to drive through the Magic Roundabout.

It looks like my prior answer as to the shortest route was an accurate guess, though.

[ran4sh]

According to my Travel Mapping map, it's NJ 81. I've never had any reason to use that route all the way to US 1-9, I've only used a small segment of it to access the Jersey Gardens mall from the NJ Turnpike.