Farm/Ranch to Market Road distribution (was: try to guess what this is)

[NE2]

[ARMOURERERIC]

Illegals traversing Texas, seriously, I would guess Prop 1 road project locations.

[MaxConcrete]

Farm to Market (FM) roads in green, Ranch Roads (RR) and Ranch to Market (RM) in yellowish color.

The big clues are FM 170 near Big Bend and the absence of roads in Dallas county, as well as the exclusion of most roads in far southwest Texas.

[US81]

That was my guess, for the same reasons, also noting the absence in Kenedy county. The first map I checked didn't have RM 2627 in Brewster county correctly identified, though, and I wanted some free time to look at a better map before posting.

[NE2]

Can we stop calling US 281 the dividing line between FM and RM now?

[Scott5114]

Which makes one wonder what the RM type is even trying to achieve, considering how thoroughly intermixed with the FMs most of them are.

[NE2]

Which makes one wonder what the RM type is even trying to achieve, considering how thoroughly intermixed with the FMs most of them are.

I read somewhere that the residents along the route can request an RM rather than an FM. That's probably how most RMs outside the big clump came to be.

[Marc]

Which makes one wonder what the RM type is even trying to achieve, considering how thoroughly intermixed with the FMs most of them are.

I read somewhere that the residents along the route can request an RM rather than an FM. That's probably how most RMs outside the big clump came to be.

Piggy backing off of that... I live off of RM 620 in far northwest Austin. Most online address verification systems will not accept RM 620 and often correct it to FM 620.

I realize FM and RM roads fall under the same exact category, but it always irks me when I cannot list my address as RM/Ranch Road 620.

[dfwmapper]

Even worse is that some of the street signs along RM 1431 in Cedar Park show FM 1431 instead. The ones at Sam Bass, Parmer/Ronald Reagan, and 183A are wrong. I don't think any of them are Cedar Park's fault since they use a different design with the city logo.

[txstateends]

Google maps have trouble with labeling some roads that are FM as RM, or RM as FM.

[dfwmapper]

Google maps have trouble with labeling some roads that are FM as RM, or RM as FM.

I fix them when I notice one that is wrong. If you know of any that are still wrong, let me know.

[NE2]

TXDOT got it wrong here.

[lordsutch]

I fix them when I notice one that is wrong. If you know of any that are still wrong, let me know.

Not surprising; the underlying TIGER data that Google probably got third-hand has a lot of errors and outdated designations.

Interestingly enough, the Loop and Spur systems also share a distinct numbering space (separate from the RM/FM space) but you don't see as many Loop/Spur errors, I guess because it's easier to keep them straight.

What's also interesting is that most of South Texas is ranching, except in the lower valley east of RGC, but almost everything south of San Antonio has a FM designation.

[NE2]

Not surprising; the underlying TIGER data that Google probably got third-hand has a lot of errors and outdated designations.

Interestingly enough, the Loop and Spur systems also share a distinct numbering space (separate from the RM/FM space) but you don't see as many Loop/Spur errors, I guess because it's easier to keep them straight.

Probably because TIGER got a lot of info from topos, which don't distinguish FM from RM but do show Loop or Spur.

[US81]

I find the exceptions kind of interesting.

Tarrant County has one RM (2871). Foard County has one RM (1919). Shelby County has one RM (2695). Henderson County has about 4 RMs; all the other in-county roads of the same class are nominally FM roads. Foard County is near the panhandle in an area that seems much ranch-y than farm-y, in which I would have expected mostly RM designations. Tarrant County, while being mostly urban - Ft. Worth, also known as "Cowtown" - the terrain is shifting to ranch territory. Here I'm not surprised to find a mix, I'm just surprised to find the one RM and the rest designated FM. Shelby and Henderson counties are in east Texas, though - Shelby borders Louisiana and Henderson is south east of Dallas. Neither seems very ranch-land-ish at all, and yet, there are designated RMs there.

I'm sure it all makes sense to someone.

[J N Winkler]

Can we stop calling US 281 the dividing line between FM and RM now?

I think the stake got put through that myth a while ago.  However, it is nice to have the true spatial distribution of FM and RM plotted on a map since this allows us to focus on a new question:  why are RMs so dense in the Hill Country?

My conjecture is that, at some point, there was a general redesignation of state highways in which it was presumed that secondaries in the Hill Country would be RM rather than FM.  There is a rather sharply defined dividing line in the east and I am not sure what feature, if any, it follows.  It clearly does not overlap county boundaries since it splits Williamson, Travis, and Hays Counties.  My best guess at this point is the Balcones Fault, traditionally regarded as the eastern boundary of the Hill Country.

I read somewhere that the residents along the route can request an RM rather than an FM. That's probably how most RMs outside the big clump came to be.

This is what Randy Hersh remembered being told by a TxDOT engineer.  I don't know if the reverse was ever true in the Hill Country (RM by default, FM by petition).

In regard to the address verification problem, I wonder if the distinction between farm-to-market routes and urban routes comes into play.  As I understand it, TxDOT is not allowed to maintain FMs inside cities, so lengths of FMs in incorporated municipalities continue to be signed as FMs but in reality are URs, each UR having the same number as the corresponding FM route.  In principle this device should work exactly the same way for RMs annexed by cities, but I can easily envision a situation where RM-derived URs map onto FMs with the same number as a result of a bureaucratic oversight.

[NE2]

My conjecture is that, at some point, there was a general redesignation of state highways in which it was presumed that secondaries in the Hill Country would be RM rather than FM.

Assuming there are no omissions in the HDF (which is not a safe assumption), the first RM roads were:
*1942: 12, 18 (Colorado City-south), 32, 33
*1945: 152, 165, 187, 189, 335, 336, 337, 385, 386, 474, 479, 480, 484, 505, 628
I think these are all in the yellow area, except for 628.

The 1950s saw a bunch of redesignations from FM to RM. It's possible that some or all of the above were also changed at this time and the HDF is missing this (I suspect this is true for 628). But the 1945 official does show "Farm or Ranch Highway", so there were some by then.

There was at least one change in the other direction: RM 2657 became FM in 1992. This is right on the edge of the yellow.

[dfwmapper]

Not surprising; the underlying TIGER data that Google probably got third-hand has a lot of errors and outdated designations.

Interestingly enough, the Loop and Spur systems also share a distinct numbering space (separate from the RM/FM space) but you don't see as many Loop/Spur errors, I guess because it's easier to keep them straight.

The loops/spurs are (or were, before I started cleaning them up) a mess on Google Maps. Most of the old loop routes that were cancelled in the 90s and redesignated as BI/BUs were still on the map, just not as numbered highways so they didn't get icons. I've also come across several that are spur instead of loop, or vice versa.

[Mr Downtown]

Why none in Dallas County?

[NE2]

Why none in Dallas County?

There are some. There probably used to be more.

[dfwmapper]

The Farm to Market Road system was created to expand access in rural areas. Most of Dallas County wasn't particularly rural by the time the system got serious funding in 1949. The population was already over 600,000 at that point.

[Road Hog]

There are also Urban Roads (supposedly) which fit the same category as FM and RM roads, but I've never seen one. A lot of FM roads in the Metroplex have been turned over to municipalities as the sprawl took hold, particularly in McKinney and Frisco.

[NE2]

Urban roads are signed as the FM and RM roads that they used to be.

[dfwmapper]

For anyone not familiar with it, urban road (UR) is just an internal designation meaning it isn't eligible for state funds for expansion, only for maintenance of existing capacity. The state system for rural roads isn't going to pay to widen city streets, that's up to the city or county. Occasionally they get dropped entirely, like FM (UR) 544 within Plano, but most remain on the system because people like the signs I guess.

[Scott5114]

For anyone not familiar with it, urban road (UR) is just an internal designation meaning it isn't eligible for state funds for expansion, only for maintenance of existing capacity. The state system for rural roads isn't going to pay to widen city streets, that's up to the city or county. Occasionally they get dropped entirely, like FM (UR) 544 within Plano, but most remain on the system because people like the signs I guess.

I imagine the reason why URs stick around is because the city has to agree to take the road over from the state (otherwise if the state drops the road then it just sits there and rots). As long as there is no need to expand the road, the city has no incentive to take over maintenance.