The numbering of the US Highway system

[FLRoads]

I've had a burning question in regards to a portion of US 1, more particularly its routing between Jacksonville, FL and Philadelphia, PA.  North of Jacksonville, US 1 beelines northwest into Georgia where it follows an inland trek.  It remains inland through South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia where it starts to make it's way back toward the eastern coastline.  On the other hand, routes US 17 and US 13 (which clearly should be west of US 1) follow the eastern coastline more closely.  My question is, why doe this occur?  Was there some sort of purpose for US 1 to be more inland in these states, with those higher numbered US highways being east, or was there some sort of mishap in the initial designation, mistakenly switching the routing of US 1 with that of US 17 and 13?

[agentsteel53]

from Wikipedia:

When the road system was laid out in the 1920s, U.S. 1 was mostly assigned to the existing Atlantic Highway, which followed the Fall Line between the Piedmont and the Atlantic Coastal Plain north of Augusta.[2] At the time, the highways farther east were of lower quality and did not serve the major population centers. [3]

[FLRoads]

I knew I should have consulted you first as I figured you'd be the first to answer my post...hehe

Thanks for directing to the answer (even it was via Wikipedia).  I sort of knew in the back of my mind that there was some sort of significance to the routing of US 1 but never thought of where exactly to look, which is why I posted here.

Maybe we can get some other questions/answers/thoughts about the numbering of the US Highway system posted here for future enjoyment.

[Scott5114]

Hey, Wikipedia's road coverage is pretty good. We have a dedicated crew of roadgeeks that keeps the articles maintained. The only problem is that we have more articles than we do roadgeeks so some states aren't covered as well. The Northeast, California, Washington State, Michigan, Ohio, Utah, and Oklahoma are all pretty well covered. The rest of the states get help whenever someone in a nearby state has the spare time and interest to edit that state. (I work on OK but will hop into KS, MO, and AR every so often.) We can always use more help though!

[Alex]

Off Topic here, but the Wikipedia concept was brought up:

I've seen outlandish things written on Wikipedia, like "Interstate 70 is planned to extend westward to the San Franciso bay area to replace Interstate 238". Andy and I read that in 2005 and laughed like crazy. Some of the wikipedia people also steal our information and claim its their own, i.e. Andy's photo of I-680/780 on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benicia-Martinez_Bridge 

How do you go about complaining about this theft to have it removed, because no, that photo is not free for use by anyone? If you want a pic of that sign bridge for commercial use, go out there and photograph it yourself, don't take the work of others and claim anyone can use it! Perhaps one of our members here can PM me or Andy and tell us what we could do about that.

[deathtopumpkins]

You could go about complaining by adding a tag onto the image saying that it violates a copyright (I know it can be done, but not how to do it--I'm not a wikipedia expert), or post on the user who uploaded it's talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ryanloney.
Oh and if you look on the image's page, the user even claims he's the copyright holder! 

[Alex]

Yes, Andy has already tried and looked into it, to no avail.

That part about him being the copyright holder infuriates us. Like I said before, if you want the image, you put the effort into driving and taking the photo yourself. We don't mind photos being used for road sites, but at least acknowledge the fact that we took the photo and from where you got it.

[Michael]

I take my own roadgeek photos for Wikipedia :

[John]

Marked that photo for deletion, it should be gone in a couple hours. If you could give me the exact url of the pic on your site, that would be great.

[us44mt]

The theft of photos is an annoying. I uploaded a number of old racing photos I took in the late 70's and early 80's to flickr. I thought a couple of people might find them interesting. I went to the local track one night and bought a poster that they were selling. Lo and behold, 4 of the images on the racing collage were lifted from my flickr pages. Very annoying. I should have at least gotten a free poster!

I have quite a few images that are used in wikipedia, but someone always asked. 

[Alex]

Marked that photo for deletion, it should be gone in a couple hours. If you could give me the exact url of the pic on your site, that would be great.

http://www.westcoastroads.com/california/images701/i-780_eb_exit_007a_02.jpg

Thanks!!

[US71]

Hey, Wikipedia's road coverage is pretty good. We have a dedicated crew of roadgeeks that keeps the articles maintained. The only problem is that we have more articles than we do roadgeeks so some states aren't covered as well. The Northeast, California, Washington State, Michigan, Ohio, Utah, and Oklahoma are all pretty well covered. The rest of the states get help whenever someone in a nearby state has the spare time and interest to edit that state. (I work on OK but will hop into KS, MO, and AR every so often.) We can always use more help though!

I just don't have a lot of time to work on Arkansas... or patience with Wikipedia's odd formatting. I dabble when I have time.

[roadfro]

Hey, Wikipedia's road coverage is pretty good. We have a dedicated crew of roadgeeks that keeps the articles maintained. The only problem is that we have more articles than we do roadgeeks so some states aren't covered as well. The Northeast, California, Washington State, Michigan, Ohio, Utah, and Oklahoma are all pretty well covered. The rest of the states get help whenever someone in a nearby state has the spare time and interest to edit that state. (I work on OK but will hop into KS, MO, and AR every so often.) We can always use more help though!

The roadgeeks maintaining Wikipedia's road articles are pretty vigilant, making sure vandalism and blatant falsehoods are removed in a timely manner.  Personally, I am working on Nevada highways and have all such articles on my watchlist.  One thing I noticed is that many of the Nevada articles were started by basically taking information right out of the AARoads Nevada route logs--I've been removing/expanding that with other sources as my time permits.

Anyway, you might take a look at some of the Featured, A-Class, or Good Articles of the US Roads Wikiproject to see some of the more high-quality articles produced by the community.

[agentsteel53]

if only the shield images weren't so terrible at times!

[Scott5114]

if only the shield images weren't so terrible at times!

We try and follow the standard to the letter as far as possible. All our Interstate shields are generally made to the SHS 2003 standard for instance. Likewise our color palette is drawn straight from the Pantone color standards that are on the MUTCD webpages. Of course, signs you see in the field might not meet the standard–many DOTs tend to take liberties with the standards  (often the blue is a lot brighter than standard). We try to mitigate this by following the state DOT's standard when it's available, but of course many states don't do that.

The quality might slip for historic shields since the exact standards and fonts (especially weird DOT-unique fonts) are typically impossible to find. Many of us are unfamiliar with what historic shields were used at what times. If you could highlight some of the stuff you have problems with we'll work on it!

By the way, I am an administrator on Wikipedia. If you have any problems regarding people thefting your images or any other concern (especially if it relates to the road projects) feel free to send me any concerns either through PM here, my Wikipedia talk page, or by email. Copyright infringement is a big deal at Wikipedia. Also, the U.S. Roads project is made up of roadgeeks just like this forum is and we want to work well with the roadgeek community!

[John]

The roadgeeks maintaining Wikipedia's road articles are pretty vigilant, making sure vandalism and blatant falsehoods are removed in a timely manner.  Personally, I am working on Nevada highways and have all such articles on my watchlist.  One thing I noticed is that many of the Nevada articles were started by basically taking information right out of the AARoads Nevada route logs--I've been removing/expanding that with other sources as my time permits.

I've been trying to get Nevada somewhere off and on, but man is it a mess. Besides the US/I routes, 28, and 88, I can't think of a single article above start-class.

[agentsteel53]

The quality might slip for historic shields since the exact standards and fonts (especially weird DOT-unique fonts) are typically impossible to find. Many of us are unfamiliar with what historic shields were used at what times. If you could highlight some of the stuff you have problems with we'll work on it!

those are the ones I'm talking about.  I remember the "US Route Shield" article having a terrible Arizona US 66 with all the wrong fonts!

[Scott5114]

those are the ones I'm talking about.  I remember the "US Route Shield" article having a terrible Arizona US 66 with all the wrong fonts!

It appears to be gone now!

[FLRoads]

I hate to burst bubbles here, but can we get back on track...?  Maybe all these Wikipedia posts can be started in their own thread??

[TheStranger]

Reviving this old thread because of a thought I just had:

Obviously, the grids were not designed to be as strict as those of the later Interstate system, which leads to an interesting point:

This is more noticeable for the x1 routes than the x0 routes (as the x0 routes tended to be very strictly transcontinental - even receiving superflous extensions to the west in the case of US 70 and US 50 in order to meet this claim), but what determinations made a route "major" (x1) as opposed to minor (the other odd last digits)?

Sometimes this is very obvious - US 1 - but then I find it rather intriguing that US 11, ostensibly a "major" route in that system, was supplanted for through traffic by the "non-major" I-59 and I-81; I-77 became the parallel/replacement Interstate for US 21. 

Other corridors seemed to have become more important by the 1950s, i.e. I-25 paralleling/supplanting US 85.

[agentsteel53]

Other corridors seemed to have become more important by the 1950s, i.e. I-25 paralleling/supplanting US 85.

was that corridor in general important in the 1920s?  i.e. were Denver and Albuquerque of any significance?  Bear in mind that between US-81 and US-91 is a very long gap, and generally not a heavily populated one.  81 or 83 is where the great plains population thins out, and 91 is straight through the mountains once it leaves Los Angeles.

[US71]

those are the ones I'm talking about.  I remember the "US Route Shield" article having a terrible Arizona US 66 with all the wrong fonts!

It appears to be gone now!

There's this one for 666:
http://road-less-taken.blogspot.com/2009/04/caveat-emptor.html

[TheStranger]

Other corridors seemed to have become more important by the 1950s, i.e. I-25 paralleling/supplanting US 85.

was that corridor in general important in the 1920s?  i.e. were Denver and Albuquerque of any significance?  Bear in mind that between US-81 and US-91 is a very long gap, and generally not a heavily populated one.  81 or 83 is where the great plains population thins out, and 91 is straight through the mountains once it leaves Los Angeles.

Looking at the routing of 81, the major cities on it (1920 populations listed in parentheses) are San Antonio (161K), Austin (34K), Fort Worth (106K), Wichita (72K)...then Fargo (21K).    

Seems like US 81 gained its x1 number by being rather important in Texas more than anywhere else...kinda like how US 101 seems to have received its number basically for the San Diego to Santa Rosa stretch, even though the 99 corridor was border-to-border and also hit up the two most important Pacific Northwest cities, as well as the capital of California.

For comparison, along US 85, the populations were 77K for El Paso, 15K for Albuquerque, 43K for Pueblo, 30K for Colorado Springs, 256K for Denver, 10K for Greeley, and 13K for Cheyenne.

[agentsteel53]

There's this one for 666:
http://road-less-taken.blogspot.com/2009/04/caveat-emptor.html

that one's a bit better, but the shield needs an outer border.

[florida]

I never knew or thought of the x1 routes being more primary than the x5 routes, but looking at the grid, it does make sense.