US 81 Truncation Texas

[Avalanchez71]

So was US 81 actually posted on I-35 prior to the truncation in 1991?  I see that they just piece meal the non-concurrent parts of the TX highway system as several different numbers or posted as BL I-85.  How well was it signed prior to completion of I-35?  When was I-35 completed anyway?

[I-35]

It was cosigned in Downtown Ft Worth in the 1980s as 35W/81/287.  I can't produce photographic proof, but I remember the signage well.

[Avalanchez71]

It appears to me that they should have just retained the US 81 designation along the state highway network.  TX now has a hodge podge of interconnected highways when just using US 81 works.   It would be a good signed detour.

[wxfree]

I remember seeing US 81 signed along the Interstate south of Fort Worth.  I don't think it was as far back as 1991.  It probably took years to change the signs.  I specifically remember that I-35W and US 81 were side-by-side on the entrance ramp signs, meaning they would have to replace the posts, and not just take the US 81 sign off from below the Interstate sign on a straight post.  Even where the signs were stacked, they may have still replaced the posts.  When the night speed limits were cancelled, they didn't just take down the "Night 65" signs, they replaced (or maybe cut) the posts so that the bottom of the "Speed Limit 70" signs would be at the correct height.  Then a few months or years later they went back around and replaced many of them with "Speed Limit 75" signs.  I don't remember from that long ago, but they may have replaced the sign posts with vertically stacked signs with shorter ones so that the Interstate signs weren't too high up now that there wasn't another one below.

I don't remember this, but according to the designation files, some of the business routes were signed as Business US 81 while US 81 was moved to the freeway.  In some places US 81 went off the freeway and through town.  At the time, business routes were not official designations, so each one had a loop number designation and was signed as a business route.  In 1991, business routes became official designation.  In places where US 81 was moved to the freeway and the business routes were given loop designations, that happened in the early to mid 60s.  This isn't necessarily when the freeway was completed.  Some designations are issued decades before the change happens, and some are issued years after the change, but given the consistency and the importance of the Interstate project, I suspect that the designations were given at about the same time as the changes happened.