Poll on US Highways and Interstates

Started by SEWIGuy, September 21, 2021, 10:50:15 AM

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How would you prefer US Highways be handled when an Interstate takes over the corridor.

Keep US Highway on parallel road (e.g., US-11)
Turn it to state route on parallel road (e.g., US-16 in Minnesota and Wisconsin)
End the route where the interstate takes over and turn remaining to a state route (e.g., US-61)
Hide the route on the interstate and have it reemerge later (e.g., US-41 in Wisconsin)
Duplex the route on the interstate

SEWIGuy

I know that the answer likely changes depending on the circumstance, but I thought this could be an interesting discussion.


jlam

As it is handled in Georgia, US routes should serve a purpose like frontage roads. They back up the road in case of construction, and they serve smaller roads that don't meet the interstate proper.

paulthemapguy

Quote from: SEWIGuy on September 21, 2021, 10:50:15 AM
I know that the answer likely changes depending on the circumstance... .
It definitely does.  The choice of what to do is highly contingent upon the geography and the layout of existing corridors.  This will be another one of those polls where I don't answer because there is nothing close to an overarching philosophy that I can agree upon...as long as you don't do what Illinois did with I-39, putting the US route as a duplex with the interstate and then inventing a stupid state route number for the surface road.  Two highways having three numbers is unnecessarily convoluted. Why not two numbers for two routes?
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CoreySamson

I voted the first option, as a parallel route helps out for emergency detours, and it keeps the US route on the old route, avoiding potential renaming confusion. Keeps a little bit of relevance to the small towns the interstate bypasses, too.

In urban areas, it should follow the frontage roads if there is no other parallel option (Katy Freeway, I'm looking at you)
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AcE_Wolf_287

It Honestly Depends, If the Highway has been completely built on (Like I-80 on US 40 in Nevada) or (I-15 on US 91 in Parts of Utah) then the highway should either be decommissioned or put onto the highway but unsigned (US 85 in New Mexico) but if the old road is still very much there (US 21 in Ohio, & West Virginia) or (US 25 in Ohio & Michigan) there should be no need for it to be removed as they're still important side roads

skluth

This isn't an option in much of the West. Often, the interstate was built on top of the existing route; there is no parallel route to consider. I'd love for there to be a parallel road through Cabazon Pass because an accident on I-10 could mean a detour of several hours. Same is true for accidents between Chiriaco Summit and Desert Center on I-10. It wouldn't be tough to list a dozen similar highway situations west of the 100th meridian.

I agree with the poster regarding Illinois. Trash IL 251.

Bruce

US 99 and US 10 would have been hard to retain as standalone highways in WA. We'd have to have long overlaps like I-84/US 30 in OR, which is not ideal for system legibility.

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: Bruce on September 21, 2021, 02:39:12 PM
US 99 and US 10 would have been hard to retain as standalone highways in WA. We'd have to have long overlaps like I-84/US 30 in OR, which is not ideal for system legibility.

In California US 99 could have been retained from Wheeler Ridge to Red Bluff fairly easy.  In fact CA 99 more or less acts as the alternate to I-5 even now.  It would have been even better if former US 99 in Piru Gorge was retained as an alternative to I-5 rather than being converted to a reservoir.  I don't think planners in California really accounted for the fact that the surface highways still had a substantial use when the freeways back up.  This phenomenon is apparent with The Old Road (Old US 99), Sierra Highway (Old US 6) and Cajon Boulevard (Old US 66-91-395).

SkyPesos

US 30 got some special treatment in the west considering how long it's concurrent. If it was US 10 or US 40, it would've been truncated to Pine Bluffs, WY.

GaryV

Where's the option for "Truncate the US route and turn back to local control"?  E.g. US-12 (original) and US-16 in Michigan.

fillup420

Where is the North-Carolina-style choice? Build a freeway and move the US route onto it, then 40 years later, change the number to interstate and move the US route back.

TheHighwayMan3561

As you said in your OP it can be tough to have a blanket option because what's good for one state may not be good for another. In Minnesota, the parallel county roads are as good of quality as any state highway, so I have no problem with turning parallel US routes back to counties (although I would have favored ghosting US 61 over decommissioning it). In states where county road standards are generally much more lax, those parallel US routes should stay separate.
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Roadgeekteen

It depends. I'm fine with some paralleling but things like US 5 and US 11 are just ridiculous.
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hbelkins

I voted for the second option. US routes are supposed to serve a specific purpose, and that purpose is to serve specific interstate (as opposed to Interstate) corridors as the primary through route.

There is no reason for US 25 to exist in Kentucky north of Corbin. There really isn't a reason for US 25W to exist in either Kentucky or Tennessee. In fact, I'd argue that the continued existence of US 25 north of its intersection with I-26 in North Carolina is questionable. There is no reason for a interstate route with a high-tiered number to run between Knoxville and Cincinnati; that purpose is now served by I-75. If a state-maintained, numbered route is necessary to parallel the Interstate corridor for emergency detours, then let Tennessee revert its section of 25W from Knoxville to the state line to TN 9 (its hidden state route number) and let the US 25W/25 corridor from Jellico to Florence (intersection with US 42/127) become KY 25.

(I realize this messes with US 25E, which is a major corridor, so to justify keeping US 25 north of the Eastern Continental Divide where it intersects I-26 south of Asheville, I'd renumber US 25E from Newport, Tenn., to Corbin as US 25, to terminate at I-75 Exit 29. Sure, there would be an intersection of US 25 and KY 25, but if Montana and Virginia can manage to have same-numbered state and US routes intersect, no reason Kentucky couldn't.

US 11 is a travesty. Other than the E-W split between Knoxville and Bristol, the segment in Pennsylvania between Harrisburg and Scranton/Wilkes-Barr, and the portion northeast of Watertown, it has no independent utility. It serves the same communities as the through routes of I-59, I-75, and I-81. There is no reason most of it cannot or should not be a state-numbered route.

Incidental overlaps or parallels (the various I-64/US 60 overlaps, for example) should be looked at on an individual basis. There's really no avoiding the short concurrency in south Charleston (as opposed to South Charleston), but why does US 60 diverge from I-64 to run through Covington? Why should that not be Business or Alternate 60 and keep 60 on the Interstate? It's obvious that through traffic from White Sulphur Springs to Lexington is going to use the freeway, so let the two routes run concurrently there and then US 60 has independent utility from there on. (Other than the 55 mph speed limit and the Blue Ridge crossing between Buena Vista and Amherst, it's not that bad of an alternate to 64 and 81 to the Richmond area.)

For very long overlaps (think I-70/US 40 in Missouri and Kansas), perhaps truncate the route at the end of its longest independent segment and let the other independent segments (such as US 40 in Colorado and Utah) become a 3dUS child of its original parent.

If I ran AASHTO, I'd get ruthless about decommissioning US highways that didn't serve high-traffic long-distance corridors. Who is going to start out in Indianapolis and use US 421 all the way to Lexington, Bristol, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, or Wiimington? US 421 does not need to be a United States Numbered Route in Kentucky, Virginia, or Tennessee.


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kenarmy

  The second option doesn't do anything for me. Splitting up a cross-country route into 9 different state routes doesn't create any more ease. A US highway being secondary to an interstate ≠ reason enough to be downgraded imo. And most people don't know or care about the hierarchy of the routes anyway.  I would only use the third option if the new state route is *very* short and is far away.

Just a reminder that US 6, 49, 50, and 98 are superior to your fave routes :)


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US 89

Quote from: paulthemapguy on September 21, 2021, 10:54:22 AM
as long as you don't do what Illinois did with I-39, putting the US route as a duplex with the interstate and then inventing a stupid state route number for the surface road.  Two highways having three numbers is unnecessarily convoluted. Why not two numbers for two routes?

You think that's bad? Check out what Utah did with I-70 and US 89 between Sevier and Salina. Old 89 between Sevier and Elsinore was dropped from state maintenance, which is fine... but that only represented about 1/4 of the parallel old highway. The rest of it is now parts of SR 258, SR 118, SR 120 (which may or may not be concurrent with 118), SR 118 again, and SR 24. That's just messy. I don't understand why 89 couldn't have been retained for all those.

My general preference would be this: if after interstate construction you still have a parallel old road that is state numbered, keep the US route there. If you're dumping the old road to counties/cities and your state doesn't allow for state numbers on non-state-maintained roads, move the US route to the freeway. You don't even have to sign the concurrencies. But there's no reason to decommission completely - keep the US route around for any independent state-maintained segments that might still exist.

froggie

One option not included in the poll, which I generally followed in my fictional US highway redo, is to (where feasible) relocate the US route onto another corridor that has utility independent of the Interstate.

CoreySamson

Quote from: froggie on September 22, 2021, 08:58:29 AM
One option not included in the poll, which I generally followed in my fictional US highway redo, is to (where feasible) relocate the US route onto another corridor that has utility independent of the Interstate.
So something like rerouting US 90 from I-10's corridor onto US 90 ALT? I like that.
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HighwayStar

I am happy to see my favored solution is winning a solid 70% of the vote right now.
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ran4sh

I'm one of those people who believes that a route designation should reflect the funding (i.e. Interstate/US/State Primary routes should be state or federally funded, with lower classifications being locally funded), and also, that a route designation should reflect the best route to use between points along the route.

The poll option that is the most consistent with those 2 principles is to have the routes overlap on the Interstate. The other option is to have the US route end at the Interstate if the US route doesn't continue past the overlap.
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DenverBrian

I could see the need to retain contiguous US routing when everyone was using paper maps. In the current era of online/onboard navigation, there is no longer any need for that kind of continuity, IMO.

SkyPesos

Quote from: DenverBrian on September 25, 2021, 01:10:56 AM
I could see the need to retain contiguous US routing when everyone was using paper maps. In the current era of online/onboard navigation, there is no longer any need for that kind of continuity, IMO.
So are you suggesting that each US route should be able to have multiple gaps and segments, like some of Indiana's state routes?

wxfree

I like the idea of keeping a US route along the original road, even if it's close and parallel.  This only applies if there is a significant stretch beyond each end of the parallel section.  If the independent alignment ends where the road approaches the Interstate, then it runs 50 miles parallel and ends, I might prefer changing that part to a state route.

I don't like the idea of putting a US route on frontage roads.  If the Interstate covers up the old route, put both on the freeway and leave the frontage roads as frontage roads.  The examples of numbered frontage roads around me are due to toll roads.  Texas 121 runs along frontage roads while the freeway is an unnumbered toll road.  US 183 is on frontage roads surrounding the Texas 130 toll road.  Parts of Beltway 8 are like that.  There's some utility is marking the untolled parallel route with a certain number, but for the most part I think it's unnecessarily confusing and there's no reason to do it if tolls aren't involved (or some other special circumstance).
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thspfc

In most situations I would choose the first one, but in places where keeping the existing road is not logical (i.e. if the Interstate needs to utilize the previously existing roadway as one of its carriageways), then the fourth option is best.

SectorZ

Quote from: Roadgeekteen on September 21, 2021, 08:09:49 PM
It depends. I'm fine with some paralleling but things like US 5 and US 11 are just ridiculous.

Why are they ridiculous though? They serve a purpose. While I can't speak for US 11 as much, US 5 has plenty of independent utility along the I-91 corridor. To a point the traveling public in the area knows 5 and 91 parallel each other and as such if they want to avoid parts of 91 then 5 is a useful back road that will get them to the same place. 5, the road itself, isn't going anywhere, so why change a number right?



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