Wait! What?

[Coelacanth]

So Mn/DOT has published a study about expansion of the MnPass HOT lanes in the Twin Cities area. http://www.dot.state.mn.us/mnpass/mnpass9-24.pdf (warning: it's a large pdf)

Not sure how I feel about congestion pricing, but that's not really my point. What I found fascinating is the maps that they are using to illustrate the various corridors. It's a fairly standard Twin Cities area highway map. It shows the new US 212 freeway as TH 312, so it must be fairly recent, right? Last couple of years. Right??

It shows notably no-longer-extant TH 49. Well, ok, that was just turned back a few years ago. Also TH 152; not all the way to St. Cloud, but the Brooklyn Blvd and Washington Ave sections.

It also shows TH 278. This is cool; I drive on it every day. But it hasn't been a trunk highway since about 1981. 

It also has Hennepin CSAH 81 labeled as a trunk highway between TH 100 and I-694. That's fine; it used to be a trunk highway. TH 81, yes, but not for over 20 years. It was US 169 and US 52 before that. So why does this map show it as TH 101? 

I've seen other examples of these weird anachronisms on Mn/DOT maps before, but I don't recall ever seeing an instance of a road being so bizarrely mislabeled. Does anyone have any other examples?

[froggie]

I read this a few weeks ago.  The maps you mention didn't click at first...what it looks like to me is a cheap map job using some sort of commercial map provider.  It's definitely NOT MnDOT-native map data they used, which is indeed weird.

Another thing of note:  Figure 4.2 on page 4-7 (I-35W North connection to downtown):  the LRT alignment is a bit different than what they show here (it's not in the median in this particular area).

[J N Winkler]

It's definitely NOT MnDOT-native map data they used, which is indeed weird.

It happens a lot more frequently than one might expect.  FAPG 630(b) Supplement (which lays out FHWA's expectations for construction plans for federal-aid projects) calls for a small map, ideally located on the title sheet of the construction plans set, which shows the location of the project.  It is normal for this extract to be taken from the state DOT's CAD mapping, but I have long since stopped counting the number of plans sets I have seen where a screengrab from MapQuest or Google Maps has been used for this purpose.