Differences in how US routes are handled between western and eastern US

[kkt]

Mod Note: This topic began as part of a discussion stemming from this post in the "I-11/US 93 - Boulder City Bypass" thread on the Pacific Southwest board, where it was asked why I-11 went around Boulder City (instead of through it) and subsequently further why NDOT didn't leave US 93 on the original routing. This sparked over a page of off-topic discussion with broader discussion potential, so this was broken off to its own thread so it could be moved to General Highway Talk. Some Nevada-specific context remains in the original thread, but the most relevant background prompting the extended discussion is quoted in this first post. –Roadfro (Pacific Southwest mod)

That was probably just a result of maintaining a consistent policy--US 395 was also moved to I-580, and an alternate route was created on the surface roads.

Is there a reason why they made the old route US 93 Business instead of retaining US 93 there and making the bypass I-11 alone?

NDOT's SOP has almost always been to move the US Highway mainline to a new freeway bypass and go request a business route designation for the old highway.

^ My guess is that US-93 was planned as a freeway bypass before the I-11 designation came up, but I'm not sure.

The Boulder City Bypass was in planning and design stages probably 10-15 years before the concept of I-11.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of how US 395 handles it either.  I can get it to some extent around Reno since I-580 ends and it needs to get over to the freeway somehow, but that doesn't mean it needs to do this for the whole route.  I prefer to minimize overlaps and I hate the useless ones.  If it were up to me I'd either:
1. Have kept US 395 on the old route to current exit 31 and overlap to I-80.
2. Have kept US 395 on the old route the whole way and designate the freeway north of I-80 as NV 580.
3. Have kept US 395 on the old route and extend I-580 north to where the freeway rejoins US 395.

Route numbers are primarily for navigation, letting drivers new to the area know where the best route is.  They are not for a history lesson in where the best road used to be.  The best through route is now I-580, so the US 395 route belongs there.  The old route now functions as an auxiliary route, so US 395A or 395 Business are good numbers for it.

[vdeane]

^ Interstates are the primary, US routes secondary.  Otherwise, what is the point of the US route system continuing to exist in the first place?  Out in my part of the country, keeping the US route on the local road while the interstate is the through route is just how things are done.

[cl94]

^ Interstates are the primary, US routes secondary.  Otherwise, what is the point of the US route system continuing to exist in the first place?  Out in my part of the country, keeping the US route on the local road while the interstate is the through route is just how things are done.

Which is not how things are out west, or really anywhere away from the east coast. Out here, US Routes are primary. And US 395 is the primary long-distance route here, serving as the main road between Los Angeles and Reno/extreme northeast Califo0rnia. You want US 395 through traffic remaining on the best road. And yes, US 395 generally remains the fastest way between SoCal and CA east of the Sierra crest even today, and there is a lot of through traffic.

395A is a totally fine designation for the surface road. Implies that it isn't the main route, but that it is still a perfectly good alternate in case of issues along 580/395. And indeed, it is used in the event of weather/crashes messing up 580.

[kkt]

^ Interstates are the primary, US routes secondary.  Otherwise, what is the point of the US route system continuing to exist in the first place?  Out in my part of the country, keeping the US route on the local road while the interstate is the through route is just how things are done.

Interstates are primary where they exist.  But there are a lot of US routes where rebuilding the entire road as an interstate is unjustified.  US 395, US 95, US 97 are not going to have interstates for their full length for the forseeable future.  They have freeway sections built with interstate money and those sections have interstate numbers, but they don't form a network.  To form a network, the US route numbers are signed together with the interstate numbers over the freeway sections.

[vdeane]

^ Interstates are the primary, US routes secondary.  Otherwise, what is the point of the US route system continuing to exist in the first place?  Out in my part of the country, keeping the US route on the local road while the interstate is the through route is just how things are done.

Interstates are primary where they exist.  But there are a lot of US routes where rebuilding the entire road as an interstate is unjustified.  US 395, US 95, US 97 are not going to have interstates for their full length for the forseeable future.  They have freeway sections built with interstate money and those sections have interstate numbers, but they don't form a network.  To form a network, the US route numbers are signed together with the interstate numbers over the freeway sections.

Then what is the point of the interstate numbers?  You're just creating a bunch of overlaps that exist over entire routes and/or long distances.  If US routes and interstates are considered equal, then why have two separate numbering systems?  Why not just make one numbering system and get rid of the US routes that aren't major enough to count as part of it?

[Max Rockatansky]

^ Interstates are the primary, US routes secondary.  Otherwise, what is the point of the US route system continuing to exist in the first place?  Out in my part of the country, keeping the US route on the local road while the interstate is the through route is just how things are done.

Interstates are primary where they exist.  But there are a lot of US routes where rebuilding the entire road as an interstate is unjustified.  US 395, US 95, US 97 are not going to have interstates for their full length for the forseeable future.  They have freeway sections built with interstate money and those sections have interstate numbers, but they don't form a network.  To form a network, the US route numbers are signed together with the interstate numbers over the freeway sections.

Then what is the point of the interstate numbers?  You're just creating a bunch of overlaps that exist over entire routes and/or long distances.  If US routes and interstates are considered equal, then why have two separate numbering systems?  Why not just make one numbering system and get rid of the US routes that aren't major enough to count as part of it?

That is probably what the numbering system should have been from the get-go.  I really like how Mexico did this concept with the Federal Highways and Autopistas.  The brand recognition thing with the Interstates could have been simply a red/white/blue US Route shield along segments that met certain design standards.  Certainly, it would have spared the road community (not that I'm suggesting this is important to the normal traveler) much of the Interstate grid perfectionism which plagues the hobby.

[kkt]

^ Interstates are the primary, US routes secondary.  Otherwise, what is the point of the US route system continuing to exist in the first place?  Out in my part of the country, keeping the US route on the local road while the interstate is the through route is just how things are done.

Interstates are primary where they exist.  But there are a lot of US routes where rebuilding the entire road as an interstate is unjustified.  US 395, US 95, US 97 are not going to have interstates for their full length for the forseeable future.  They have freeway sections built with interstate money and those sections have interstate numbers, but they don't form a network.  To form a network, the US route numbers are signed together with the interstate numbers over the freeway sections.

Then what is the point of the interstate numbers?  You're just creating a bunch of overlaps that exist over entire routes and/or long distances.  If US routes and interstates are considered equal, then why have two separate numbering systems?  Why not just make one numbering system and get rid of the US routes that aren't major enough to count as part of it?

If I'd been King of the Roads in 1956, I would have said the new freeways keep the number of the US route they replace, when there is one.  Unfortunately for everyone, I wasn't around yet.

I expect the answer lies in promoting recognition for the Federal role in funding the interstates - "See, you are getting shiny new 70 mph design speed freeways for your gas taxes, and weren't your congressmen thoughtful to get it for you!"

[vdeane]

While thinking of this, I came up with another question - why wouldn't people know "interstate = freeway" out west?  If US 395 were not on I-580, wouldn't the presence of I-580 with signs for Reno tell people to get off US 395 if they're through traffic?  And why did the east and west develop different systems?  The western system seems a lot more messy to me with business routes and alternates and whatnot everywhere, especially since US routes hop on and off interstates seemingly randomly in some places.  In fact, if I were queen of the roads, I would eliminate the concept of interstate business loops/spurs and bannered US/state routes from the transportation system entirely.

Incidentally, had the interstates just been made from the US routes, that would have created a few issues in NY, since in the 1920s our AASHO representative had differing views to everyone else on what the point of the US route system was.  He thought that US routes should only be the most important corridors, which is why NY has very little in the way of US route mileage today.  Plus not all routes go in the same places.  I-87 doesn't exactly follow either US 9 or US 9W, I-81 diverges from US 11 (although US 11 probably would have followed I-81's route had the Thousand Islands Bridge been built in the 20s, with the remainder being US 2), I-88 and I-86 have no US route counterparts, etc.  This pattern exists all over; I-89 is a cob job of corridors, many of them state.  Same for I-95 (to a lesser extent) between Jacksonville and Richmond, and again between Baltimore and NYC.

[pderocco]

If I'd been King of the Roads in 1956, I would have said the new freeways keep the number of the US route they replace, when there is one.  Unfortunately for everyone, I wasn't around yet.

Indeed, they did the exact opposite, arranging the numbers in the opposite directions, and leaving out lots of middle numbers like I-50 and I-60, in order to avoid clashes.

[cl94]

While thinking of this, I came up with another question - why wouldn't people know "interstate = freeway" out west?  If US 395 were not on I-580, wouldn't the presence of I-580 with signs for Reno tell people to get off US 395 if they're through traffic?  And why did the east and west develop different systems?  The western system seems a lot more messy to me with business routes and alternates and whatnot everywhere, especially since US routes hop on and off interstates seemingly randomly in some places.  In fact, if I were queen of the roads, I would eliminate the concept of interstate business loops/spurs and bannered US/state routes from the transportation system entirely.

Incidentally, had the interstates just been made from the US routes, that would have created a few issues in NY, since in the 1920s our AASHO representative had differing views to everyone else on what the point of the US route system was.  He thought that US routes should only be the most important corridors, which is why NY has very little in the way of US route mileage today.  Plus not all routes go in the same places.  I-87 doesn't exactly follow either US 9 or US 9W, I-81 diverges from US 11 (although US 11 probably would have followed I-81's route had the Thousand Islands Bridge been built in the 20s, with the remainder being US 2), I-88 and I-86 have no US route counterparts, etc.  This pattern exists all over; I-89 is a cob job of corridors, many of them state.  Same for I-95 (to a lesser extent) between Jacksonville and Richmond, and again between Baltimore and NYC.

No, people do know that interstates are freeways out here. The difference is that, in less-urbanized parts of the west, the travel time difference between freeway and surface road is far less than it is in the east, so a route that prioritizes Interstates is less certain to be the best route. A US Route is likely to be signed at 65-70 MPH even when it isn't a freeway. Heck, you can often drive faster on the US Route out west because there is less likely to be speed enforcement. Like, it's not uncommon for US 50 across Nevada to be moving faster than I-80 in my experience, because the cops enforce the 75-80 MPH sections relatively strictly, but 70 MPH on a surface road is effectively "no speed limit".

For example, there are few destinations where, if starting in Reno, the fastest route involves any significant amount of time on I-5 unless you're going to NW Oregon or further north. A lot of this is because the surface roads east of the Sierra/Cascades tend to be 65 MPH, so cutting the corner from 80 to 5 to reduce distance actually does save time.

With something like 580/395, there's the little case of "US 395 is the through route". It would be different if it wasn't. But we're talking about a long-distance route that runs nearly the length of the country, where much of the route is used primarily by long-distance traffic. US 395 is arguably more important than I-580. The I-designation gets signed because of reasons mentioned above, but much of the freeway was signed only as 395 when it opened.

[kkt]

All interstates are freeways (*) but not all freeways are interstates and a freeway is not always the best route to your destination.  U.S. or even state 2-lane roads especially in sparcely settled states like Nevada may be perfectly good routes that you can easily and legally drive 65 mph on that take a more direct route to your destination.

I don't understand the desire to get rid of everything that's not an interstate.  Many are important roads that just don't happen to justify an interstate, even back in the 90% Federally funded days.

(*) with rare exceptions

[US 89]

No, people do know that interstates are freeways out here. The difference is that, in less-urbanized parts of the west, the travel time difference between freeway and surface road is far less than it is in the east, so a route that prioritizes Interstates is less certain to be the best route. A US Route is likely to be signed at 65-70 MPH even when it isn't a freeway. Heck, you can often drive faster on the US Route out west because there is less likely to be speed enforcement. Like, it's not uncommon for US 50 across Nevada to be moving faster than I-80 in my experience, because the cops enforce the 75-80 MPH sections relatively strictly, but 70 MPH on a surface road is effectively "no speed limit".

Not only that, but because the west is so sparsely populated compared to the east, there are very few towns you'll have to slow down for on the US highways compared to what easterners are used to. You might as well be driving on an interstate most of the time.

In the east, there's not much distinction between US and state highways, because too many US highways are 2-lane back roads paralleling modern interstates and there are plenty of expressway type long-distance corridors that are only state routes. This generally is not the case out west, which has much less in the way of interstate mileage, so the pre-existing US highways generally maintain their status as important corridors, and that US shield actually has value. The east has so many random US routes to the point where any extra status the US shield might give gets diluted away. We don't get that in the west.

[vdeane]

No, people do know that interstates are freeways out here. The difference is that, in less-urbanized parts of the west, the travel time difference between freeway and surface road is far less than it is in the east, so a route that prioritizes Interstates is less certain to be the best route. A US Route is likely to be signed at 65-70 MPH even when it isn't a freeway. Heck, you can often drive faster on the US Route out west because there is less likely to be speed enforcement. Like, it's not uncommon for US 50 across Nevada to be moving faster than I-80 in my experience, because the cops enforce the 75-80 MPH sections relatively strictly, but 70 MPH on a surface road is effectively "no speed limit".

Not only that, but because the west is so sparsely populated compared to the east, there are very few towns you'll have to slow down for on the US highways compared to what easterners are used to. You might as well be driving on an interstate most of the time.

In the east, there's not much distinction between US and state highways, because too many US highways are 2-lane back roads paralleling modern interstates and there are plenty of expressway type long-distance corridors that are only state routes. This generally is not the case out west, which has much less in the way of interstate mileage, so the pre-existing US highways generally maintain their status as important corridors, and that US shield actually has value. The east has so many random US routes to the point where any extra status the US shield might give gets diluted away. We don't get that in the west.

Random is right.  Even the ones that don't parallel interstates are often two-lane back roads that aren't of any particular importance.  What's the point of US 44, for instance?  Or US 202?  Or US 62?

Incidentally, the length of US 395 boggles the mind, given that 3dus routes are supposed to be spur routes that are children of 2dus routes.  That notion, however, seems to have been thrown out the window even before the initial US route grid was established.  There are also a ton of US routes that seem to exist mainly to connect a bunch of small towns that aren't particularly important, even out west.  Those seem odd to me.  I guess I agree too much with the NY representative to AASHO who thought the US routes should only be the most important corridors, resulting in NY having very little in the way of US routes compared to the rest of the country.

[kkt]

The western U.S. routes (I can't speak for the eastern ones) are important routes.  Look at how few U.S. routes there are for the physical size of Nevada.  Even though the population is sparse, the people who live there still need to get around, and the chances of their counties or Nevada building them as state routes without federal aid is small.  While they need to be paved 2-lane roads, it would be just silly to go for the full freeway treatment - it would inconvenience most of the people who live there having to drive a long distance on a frontage road before they got to an interchange where they could enter the freeway.

[Max Rockatansky]

No, people do know that interstates are freeways out here. The difference is that, in less-urbanized parts of the west, the travel time difference between freeway and surface road is far less than it is in the east, so a route that prioritizes Interstates is less certain to be the best route. A US Route is likely to be signed at 65-70 MPH even when it isn't a freeway. Heck, you can often drive faster on the US Route out west because there is less likely to be speed enforcement. Like, it's not uncommon for US 50 across Nevada to be moving faster than I-80 in my experience, because the cops enforce the 75-80 MPH sections relatively strictly, but 70 MPH on a surface road is effectively "no speed limit".

Not only that, but because the west is so sparsely populated compared to the east, there are very few towns you'll have to slow down for on the US highways compared to what easterners are used to. You might as well be driving on an interstate most of the time.

In the east, there's not much distinction between US and state highways, because too many US highways are 2-lane back roads paralleling modern interstates and there are plenty of expressway type long-distance corridors that are only state routes. This generally is not the case out west, which has much less in the way of interstate mileage, so the pre-existing US highways generally maintain their status as important corridors, and that US shield actually has value. The east has so many random US routes to the point where any extra status the US shield might give gets diluted away. We don't get that in the west.

Random is right.  Even the ones that don't parallel interstates are often two-lane back roads that aren't of any particular importance.  What's the point of US 44, for instance?  Or US 202?  Or US 62?

Incidentally, the length of US 395 boggles the mind, given that 3dus routes are supposed to be spur routes that are children of 2dus routes.  That notion, however, seems to have been thrown out the window even before the initial US route grid was established.  There are also a ton of US routes that seem to exist mainly to connect a bunch of small towns that aren't particularly important, even out west.  Those seem odd to me.  I guess I agree too much with the NY representative to AASHO who thought the US routes should only be the most important corridors, resulting in NY having very little in the way of US routes compared to the rest of the country.

If I could go back to 1934-1939 I would have swapped the corridors of US 95 and US 395 somewhere around the Carson City/Reno area.  Thing is, when US 395 was extended it was aligned over largely well-built corridors such as El Camino Sierra (California LRN 23).  US 95 was delayed being extended for several years due to the ION Highway in Oregon basically being a stage road until around 1940.  Nevada was also pushing hard for an extended US 95 through the Las Vegas area and original routing of the Arrowhead Trail through Searchlight. 

[cl94]

US 395 is effectively a 2-digit corridor. East of the Sierra and Cascades, it is basically the major N-S road. It is as important as US 95, if not more important, in many locations. It certainly gets more traffic than US 95, especially south of Reno.

[US 89]

I'd argue that in the west there isn't much of a distinction between 2 and 3 digit routes. Because the road network is a lot more sparse in the west, there just isn't much in the way of shorter corridors that are significant enough to be the fastest way for a lot of interregional traffic and long enough to cross a state line.

Sure, there's a handful of really short routes like US 195, 197, and 199, but I don't think any of those would be designated today, and they'd probably be downgraded to state routes if there wasn't a state line involved. Then you have a bunch of long corridors that actually have some significance like 395, 191, 287, and 160...

[Max Rockatansky]

I feel as though US 199 is one of those corridors you really don't get how important it is until you actually drive it.  There are literally no other fully reliable roads to get east from the Northern Coast of California eastward to inward locales.  Even CA 299 (former US 299) has tons of seasonal problems and closures.  The Winnemucca-to-the-Sea promoters were really onto something once they ditched US 299 for US 199. 

[cl94]

Yeah, US 199 is more important than people realize for exactly that reason. It's the only reliable road connecting US 101 to I-5 between the Bay Area and well inside Oregon. It makes that section of the coast a little less remote.

[kkt]

Yeah, US 199 is more important than people realize for exactly that reason. It's the only reliable road connecting US 101 to I-5 between the Bay Area and well inside Oregon. It makes that section of the coast a little less remote.

Yes.  Even if it didn't cross state lines, 199 would be worth having as a US route.

CA 20 does connect US 101 and I-5 pretty reliably, although it's on the slow side slogging through the towns around Clear Lake.

It does seem to me like the US route grid had too few 2-digit US routes in the far west.  195 and 395 were needed almost immediately.

[US 89]

Yeah, US 199 is more important than people realize for exactly that reason. It's the only reliable road connecting US 101 to I-5 between the Bay Area and well inside Oregon. It makes that section of the coast a little less remote.

Yes.  Even if it didn't cross state lines, 199 would be worth having as a US route.

CA 20 does connect US 101 and I-5 pretty reliably, although it's on the slow side slogging through the towns around Clear Lake.

It does seem to me like the US route grid had too few 2-digit US routes in the far west.  195 and 395 were needed almost immediately.

I mean, it doesn't help that two of those 2-digit routes west of the Rockies were important enough that they got replaced by I-5 (99) or I-15 (91). Agreed that 199 is an important route, but crossing a state line is pretty much the only reason it still exists. California knew Oregon wasn't going to play ball on decommissioning US 199 and so never wasted their time on getting them to agree to it. US 99 was even more significant to California and they didn't hesitate to replace that with SR 99 as soon as they got a chance.

It does seem to me like the US route grid had too few 2-digit US routes in the far west.  195 and 395 were needed almost immediately.

There probably would have been a more even distribution of 2dus routes if the road network as it existed today was in place at the time. Too many corridors today simply did not exist 100 years ago. In the Great Plains, for example, there was a consistent grid of section line roads long predating the highway system, so even if there wasn't an established travel corridor, it probably wasn't hard to just designate a route on paper and eventually upgrade the section lines. The west simply never had that consistent grid backbone to build from in a lot of places - and where it did, it was usually just in the vicinity of cities. I bet the modern US 191 corridor would have been US 87 if it had existed when the original plan was drawn up.

[cl94]

Heck, as mentioned above, a decent amount of modern US 95 plain did not exist when they were drawing up the system, and that's a 2-digit. With the exception of the US 40 (now I-80) concurrency, it generally wasn't a remotely modern road between Fallon and the Snake River Valley. Parts of US 50 and US 6 also come to mind there, with Ely-Delta not getting modernized until the 50s. US 40 across the Sierra didn't get upgraded to remotely modern standards until well after it was designated.

191 and 395 totally would have gotten more major numbers had things been more developed out west. You could make an argument for at least part of 395 being 97, but the road linking Susanville to Klamath Falls was a later development.

[SkyPesos]

It does seem to me like the US route grid had too few 2-digit US routes in the far west.  195 and 395 were needed almost immediately.

The jump from US 31 to US 61 in less than 250 miles here in the Midwest didn't help with conserving N-S US route numbers in the west either. For comparison, that's about the same distance between US 21 and 31, and 61 and 71. Between those two, 37, 39, 47 and 55 are unused, 33 and 35 used on E-W routes, and 57 and 59 used on out of grid routes. A bit fictional here, but had what is now US 61 been numbered 41 or 51, there probably would've been less super long 3dus routes out west.

[US 89]

It is telling that the geographic center of the lower 48 is in Lebanon, Kansas, which is between US 81 and US 83. That means 9 of the 11 primary x1 routes, and 41 of the possible 51 odd 2dus routes, are east of the center. Obviously the more densely populated eastern half of the country deserved a denser route network, but that’s a huge discrepancy and it left no room for western expansion. This is why the Plains are full of very long 3dus routes like 281, 283, 183, 385, and 287.

Parts of US 50 and US 6 also come to mind there, with Ely-Delta not getting modernized until the 50s.

What’s fascinating about that corridor is they were willing to sign it as US 6 but not as US 50, which took a detour up north through Salt Lake until the brand new alignment was done in the early 50s. The x0 number actually meant something and implied a higher standard route, which wasn’t an issue for 6.

[Bruce]

I'd argue that in the west there isn't much of a distinction between 2 and 3 digit routes. Because the road network is a lot more sparse in the west, there just isn't much in the way of shorter corridors that are significant enough to be the fastest way for a lot of interregional traffic and long enough to cross a state line.

Sure, there's a handful of really short routes like US 195, 197, and 199, but I don't think any of those would be designated today, and they'd probably be downgraded to state routes if there wasn't a state line involved. Then you have a bunch of long corridors that actually have some significance like 395, 191, 287, and 160...

Despite its length, US 195 is pretty important given that it is the backbone of the Palouse network and is generally more reliable than US 95 to the east.