Best uses of highway funding in your state.

[SteveG1988]

I'm going to start with the US78 turning into I-22. As a truck driver I appreciate the routing the road is taking, I could not imagine just how different it would have been before 95% of the routing between Birmingham AL and Memphis TN was a freeway.


In NJ: The Upgrading of the Turnpike with the new truck lanes, and the repaving of the original lanes along the same length of the turnpike. NJTA did that the right way, and gave everyone a better road, plus it didn't take a ton of time to do the actual construction compared to other expansion projects across the nation. And as an ongoing project, the conversion of the intersections on the Parkway to full interchanges.

In PA and NJ: Interstate 78, a link that was needed to help connect the ports to I-81 which is one of the more important interstates in my opinion.

TN: 840, as built it is an excellent bypass of Nashville, nice constant speeds, well laid out, may add some distance but you make up for it in time.

MO: The new I70 bridge, beautiful span that also removes a headache from the Poplar Street Bridge.

[OCGuy81]

Two that come immediately to mind

- Improvements to the 5 Santa Ana freeway in southern LA County.  A few decades overdue.

- Improvements to CA-91 in Riverside County.  Providing access to an area where the population has increased rapidly, 91 is really one of the few east-west routes between OC/Riverside County and is constantly clogged.  The more it can be improved upon, the better!

[hbelkins]

The Kentucky parkways (former toll roads).

The APD corridors in the state.

The KY 80 corridor across the southern part of the state.

[Gnutella]

Anything PennDOT does that involves reconstructing and upgrading a substandard segment of Interstate to modern standards. Examples of this include the ongoing reconstruction of I-70 near Pittsburgh, the imminent reconstruction of I-83 in Harrisburg and York, and the design work underway on I-80 in Stroudsburg. The ongoing reconstruction and widening of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to six lanes is excellent too. Another worthwhile project coming up is the upgrading of the Potters Mills Gap on U.S. 322, which will provide an uninterrupted limited-access highway (except for one mile) between State College and Harrisburg.

[roadman65]

I-4 to be widened over the next 6 years through Orlando. 

I do not know if that counts, being its being funded by tolls that will be levied on the future HOT lanes that will be added to I-4, but a good use and a project well needed.

[UCFKnights]

I-4 to be widened over the next 6 years through Orlando. 

I do not know if that counts, being its being funded by tolls that will be levied on the future HOT lanes that will be added to I-4, but a good use and a project well needed.

I would say it counts, of the $2.3 billion being spent, they only expect half of the cost to be covered by HOT within the 40 years of the public-private partnership. Whatever is not recovered will still be responsibility of the state.

[JakeFromNewEngland]

For ConnDOT, the I-95/I-91/CT 34 reconstruction project in New Haven comes to mind. The HOV lanes in Hartford that were added 20-30 years ago also are good examples of ConnDOT spending their funding correctly.

[vdeane]

For NY:
I-781
Utica North-South Arterial Project
Tappan Zee Bridge replacement

[lordsutch]

Here in GA, the I-75/575 north and I-75 south express toll lanes projects will be a big help, even if they're partially toll-financed.

To a lesser extent, while not every GRIP project is a great idea, it is a serious investment in areas of the state that aren't metro Atlanta - a look at the Interstate system in GA shows you that while connecting the other major cities in the state to Atlanta with good roads was a priority, connecting those cities to each other wasn't, and at least some of GRIP is rectifying that problem as those corridors are getting completed.

[odditude]

NJ: I-295/I-76/Route 42 Direct Connection

[sbeaver44]

Another worthwhile project coming up is the upgrading of the Potters Mills Gap on U.S. 322, which will provide an uninterrupted limited-access highway (except for one mile) between State College and Harrisburg.

This is a good first step, but (according to http://www.dot.state.pa.us/Penndot/Districts/district2.nsf/6f9074edc7c560b585257cd20051885d/$FILE/Public_Hearing_Information.pdf) it looks like it only is a few miles near the PA 144 junction and still leaves the non-expressway gap between PA 144 and US 322 Business.

Also, I always wondered about this area, it looks as if US 322's four lanes were meant to connect with the PA 26 Bellefonte Bypass stub.  It's pretty clear from the PA 26/64 junction that it was meant to continue south somewhere, and the sudden lane drop at Potters Mills on US 322 would be a pretty straight line from there.  If they could connect those, you'd have great access to I-80.

[I-39]

In Illinois

Not much to say here, because IDOT lacks funding and almost never builds highways properly (always builds watered down expressways instead of freeway/interstates), but the best thing they did over the last 30 or so years is upgrading U.S 51 into Interstate 39 between Rockford and Bloomington-Normal. They should have built it further south to hook up with Interstate 57, but at least IDOT had enough sense to build part of the corridor to Interstate standards. The corridor now functions as a long-distance bypass of Chicagoland.

[Gnutella]

Another worthwhile project coming up is the upgrading of the Potters Mills Gap on U.S. 322, which will provide an uninterrupted limited-access highway (except for one mile) between State College and Harrisburg.

This is a good first step, but (according to http://www.dot.state.pa.us/Penndot/Districts/district2.nsf/6f9074edc7c560b585257cd20051885d/$FILE/Public_Hearing_Information.pdf) it looks like it only is a few miles near the PA 144 junction and still leaves the non-expressway gap between PA 144 and US 322 Business.

Also, I always wondered about this area, it looks as if US 322's four lanes were meant to connect with the PA 26 Bellefonte Bypass stub.  It's pretty clear from the PA 26/64 junction that it was meant to continue south somewhere, and the sudden lane drop at Potters Mills on US 322 would be a pretty straight line from there.  If they could connect those, you'd have great access to I-80.

Oh, OK. Well the segment between State College and Potters Mills looks like it should be easier to do anyway. I guess PennDOT wants to do the harder project first, probably because that's where traffic jams are worst.

So then this would leave, what, four miles left to widen just east of State College?

[pianocello]

Iowa:

Making a lot of the US highways in the eastern half of the state expressway-quality, especially US-20, US-61, US-218, and US-151. I feel like these are some of the busiest non-interstate corridors in the state, for both trucks and passenger cars, and keeping them at two lanes would be hell.

[1995hoo]

I'm inclined to say the Springfield Interchange project where I-95, I-495, and I-395 meet. It's a major interchange for I-95 thru traffic going up and down the East Coast and it used to back up severely every day at pretty much any hour (afternoon rush hour being by far the worst). After a massive reconstruction, it's no longer the problem. There's still congestion, of course, but that interchange is no longer the cause of the congestion.

The US-29 Lynchburg—Madison Heights Bypass did a lot to speed travel through that area by bypassing a lot of extremely annoying traffic lights in Madison Heights, but on the whole I think the traffic volumes through there (especially long-distance volumes of interstate traffic) are far lower than they are through Springfield and the project doesn't have the same benefit for as many people.

The new Woodrow Wilson Bridge between Virginia and Maryland was also a big improvement over the old one and the traffic is not as bad as it was, but it doesn't seem to have alleviated things to the same degree as the Springfield project did. The Beltway doesn't come to a complete standstill every afternoon heading towards the bridge the way it used to, but it still backs up at least once a week (seems to be a crapshoot when and why it happens). Of course, I suppose had they not built the new bridge, we would have faced much bigger problems due to the old one's structural deficiencies, so I suppose there's a sound argument that it was the best use of highway funding to address an impending massive problem before it truly spiraled out of control.

[roadman65]

The I-4 ultimate project is going to be a great use of funds.  As it was needed decades ago as with Orlando expanding quite rapidly over since the early 80's until now, but money and EP studies and urban issues caused it to become retro active as the average road project in Orlando is at least 10 years behind.

The next 6 years will be hell, but when finished it should alleviate a lot of traffic jams.

[cpzilliacus]

The new Woodrow Wilson Bridge between Virginia and Maryland was also a big improvement over the old one and the traffic is not as bad as it was, but it doesn't seem to have alleviated things to the same degree as the Springfield project did. The Beltway doesn't come to a complete standstill every afternoon heading towards the bridge the way it used to, but it still backs up at least once a week (seems to be a crapshoot when and why it happens). Of course, I suppose had they not built the new bridge, we would have faced much bigger problems due to the old one's structural deficiencies, so I suppose there's a sound argument that it was the best use of highway funding to address an impending massive problem before it truly spiraled out of control.

IMO, it is worthwhile to (re)consider what the Sierra Club wrote about the replacement of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge (I think this was back in 2000, not clear why this is still found online by Google). 

Woodrow Wilson Bridge, District of Columbia: $2.1 billion

The West and South aren't the only places threatened with sprawl-creating boondoggles. Right near the nation's capital, the Federal Highway Administration is finalizing plans for an incredibly expensive 12-lane drawbridge to replace the Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac River.

This design is plagued with problems. As often happens, many homes would have to be leveled to accommodate the new lanes. And, due to the magnetic effect of expanding roads, the additional capacity created is projected to be used up by the time the bridge is finished. In addition, the new bridge makes it difficult to add Metro trains or other public transportation to the crossing.

Building a tunnel under the Potomac is a much better idea. Not only would a tunnel cost up to a billion dollars less than the drawbridge, it would be able to immediately accommodate the public transportation that the region so desperately needs. A rail link across the Potomac could move 100,000 commuters per day and reduce traffic and pollution while revitalizing communities like Oxon Hill in Maryland.

Transportation is both a key cause of sprawl and a potential cure -- depending on how we spend our money. The funding and construction of freeways is a huge, hidden sprawl subsidy that is all too often an excuse to build new roads instead of an authentic response to our transportation needs.

Breaking this vicious cycle is easy: all we have to do is spend more on public transportation and less on new roads. In a country like ours, roads will always have their place. But, by investing more in public transportation, we will give people a choice in how they travel-clearing the air, preserving key habitat and freeing us from the traffic trap we have created.