Small Towns with Heavy Truck Traffic

[webny99]

I find small towns with heavy truck traffic on their surface streets really intriguing.
Clearly, the interstate system bypassed many small towns, but what are some examples of where trucks are still using the original routes from the pre-interstate era right through the heart of small towns and cities?

Here are some examples I've found:
Lewisburg, PA. The Central Susquehanna Valley Transportation Project (CSVT), when complete, will improve regional connectivity and help popularize the freeway across the river, re-routing trucks from the overwhelmed US-15.
Fultonville/Fonda, NY. Several long-haul state routes converge near a Walmart Distribution Center and major Thruway entrance truck stop.
Corning, AR. Truck traffic is constantly rolling through the heart of this small town of 3,500. Right on US-67, it's the approximate halfway point on the 350 mile journey between Little Rock and St. Louis.
Atoka, OK. US-69 and US-75, both popular truck routes between DFW and the Midwest, converge just north of this town of 3,000.
Kramer Junction, CA. More of a truck stop than a town on one of the more famous corridors omitted from the interstate system, this section of CA-58 was finally bypassed, but you can see the constancy of the truck traffic in this historic Street View.

Obviously you don't have to link to Street View like I did - This is more just a general place to talk about these types of towns, maybe get some extreme examples, and discuss whether there are any long-term plans to bypass, widen, divert trucks to other routes, mitigate noise impacts to residents, and so on.

[Hwy 61 Revisited]

Bath, Pennsylvania, is a traffic nightmare. One truck turning on Chestnut Street (987) jams the entire town to a standstill. I would expect it to have at least an expressway bypass a la that of Trexlertown, PA--maybe reroute 329 along Jacksonville, 987 along Airport, and 512 and 248 along a potential Bath Belt.

[sprjus4]

Fredericksburg, TX

At the junction of US-290, US-87, SH-16. No interstates, no bypass. Busy truck traffic, mixed with being a tourist town with historical buildings, shops lining Main St, the National Museum of the Pacific War, Nimitz Museum, and more. Very interesting city.

A freeway bypass for US-290 and US-87 is currently planned however.

https://www.txdot.gov/inside-txdot/projects/studies/austin/fredericksburg-relief-route-study.html
https://www.txdot.gov/inside-txdot/get-involved/about/hearings-meetings/austin/072319.html
http://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub/txdot/get-involved/aus/fredericksburg-relief-route/072319-route-options.pdf

Page 23 - Design standards of new route, and why using an existing surface radial route is not feasible:
* high speed facility (~70 mph)
* controlled access facility
* four main lanes
* frontage roads to maintain local access

[Max Rockatansky]

Los Banos is infamous for truck traffic since CA 152 is an expressway of both sides of town but a surface street in town.  Kerman has a pretty high volume of trucks at times trying to get through on CA 145 and CA 180.  Both locales are driven by the local agricultural industry which has a massive amount of freight volume.  It kind of makes me wish much of the surplus railroads of the Central Valley didn't go under to provide some sort of shipping alternatives. 

[ilpt4u]

Chester, IL

Don't have the stats, but the Coal Trucks using the Mississippi River bridge (and the downtown Chester streets to reach it) to get from the Southern Illinois mines to the Missouri river ports is insane

[US 89]

Heber City, Utah has to be up there given its location at the junction of two major truck routes. Most of US 189 is freeway or expressway grade, so it makes a great truck bypass of Salt Lake City if you're coming from Wyoming and heading south on 15 (or vice versa). The other truck traffic stream has to do with the fact that there's a lot of oil and natural gas extraction activity in northeastern Utah along the Duchesne-Vernal corridor. Because there are no railroad lines out there, the vast majority of that oil is trucked over US 40 to refineries in the North Salt Lake area.

[UCFKnights]

All of the small towns between I-10 near Jax along US 301 to Gainesville/I-75. Starke is among the biggest of them: https://www.google.com/maps/@29.939677,-82.1113282,3a,75y,335.76h,81.68t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7p9_VEpCzV32RIpm6ID2fw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

They recently built a bypass, much of their town is based upon business of that truck traffic so many fear the entire town will fall apart. I always found the line of vehicles getting on the highway at I-10 to be insane as well:
https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2871287,-81.9829509,3a,15y,173.37h,91.84t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sgnX91w_2GKoM6_owrSfRFQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

They also just added a new ramp so it no longer has a light, but that left turn previously would go back for miles on a regular basis. I never understood why more people didn't do what I always did, and pass it, make a U turn, and enter the highway from the other direction if they're not in a truck.

[hbelkins]

Until various four-lane sections were built on US 23 and KY 15, Prestonsburg, Paintsville, and Pikeville (23) and Hazard (15) had lots of coal truck traffic through.

[cpzilliacus]

Hillsboro, Loudoun County, Virginia, population 96 on VA-9 (Charles Town Pike).  The municipal elected officials have complained loudly about the truck traffic on VA-9, though I am not sure what the origins and destinations are (to the west, probably Jefferson County, W.Va. or Berkeley County, W.Va.).

[Rothman]

I was wondering about Batavia, NY, with trucks "shortcutting" up NY 63 from I-390.

[webny99]

I was wondering about Batavia, NY, with trucks "shortcutting" up NY 63 from I-390.

My goodness, not sure what was going on here because it's not usually that bad.
But yes, it is crazy how many trucks with Canadian plates you'll see on NY 63 and the southern half of I-390.

My (limited) experience with Batavia and surroundings actually has me wondering if a lot of those trucks take NY 63 only as far as US 20 and then take that to NY 77, avoiding Batavia and instead hitting up the TA truck stop at Pembroke before getting on the Thruway. It sure seems like Exit 48A (Pembroke) always has way more truck traffic than Exit 48 (Batavia), and I can't help but wonder if that's what's happening.

[7/8]

Morriston, ON is infamous for the two-lane portion of the busy Highway 6 which connects the 401 with the 403 (near the QEW).

[webny99]

Morriston, ON is infamous for the two-lane portion of the busy Highway 6 which connects the 401 with the 403 (near the QEW).

Wow, no kidding!
I've never been that far up Highway 6. It's quite a nice road between the 403 and Regional Rd 97, so I guess I just assumed it was four (or five) lanes all the way up to the 401. You don't notice the volume as much when it's spread out over four lanes, but we're basically talking about enough volume and certainly enough truck volume to warrant a full freeway on this corridor. That two-lane section is just crazy. It actually reminds me a lot of Highway 5 (between Clappisons Corners and Peters Corners is the stretch I'm most familiar with) just with way, way more trucks.

[corco]

Boise City, Oklahoma famously had a lot of truck trarffic but it may or may not have been elimitanted

[hbelkins]

On the far western end of my state, I'm guessing Wickliffe sees a decent amount of truck traffic, being that's where the westernmost Ohio River crossing is on US 51/60/62. Trucks use the Cairo bridge, because their other choices are to cross the Mississippi on I-155 or the Ohio on I-24.

[Max Rockatansky]

In Arizona Superior, Miami, and Globe on US 60 come to mind.  All three communities are heavily involved in mining activity which of course requires materials be hauled almost constantly.  US 60 between Superior and Miami was so bad that it actually has been recently improved.  Miami and Globe are also great places for train spotting, the former has a pretty infamously bad at-grade crossing. 

[ErmineNotyours]

My goodness, not sure what was going on here because it's not usually that bad.

Going the other way on the same day, it looks like they're doing traffic signal replacement work.

[webny99]

My goodness, not sure what was going on here because it's not usually that bad.

Going the other way on the same day, it looks like they're doing traffic signal replacement work.

Nice find - that makes sense!

[Buck87]

US 20 in Ohio between Toledo and Cleveland gets a lot of truck traffic, generated by both local traffic and longer range shunpikers.

The following towns have the 4 lane US 20 going right through their central business district: Woodville (2,135), Bellevue (8,202), Monroeville (1,400)
There's also Clyde (6,325), which has it as a 4 lane arterial that passes north of the central business district, and Wakeman (1,047), which is on the 2 lane portion.

Norwalk (17,012) and Fremont (16,734) have freeway bypasses.

[coldshoulder]

US 20 in Ohio between Toledo and Cleveland gets a lot of truck traffic, generated by both local traffic and longer range shunpikers.

The following towns have the 4 lane US 20 going right through their central business district: Woodville (2,135), Bellevue (8,202), Monroeville (1,400)
There's also Clyde (6,325), which has it as a 4 lane arterial that passes north of the central business district, and Wakeman (1,047), which is on the 2 lane portion.

Norwalk (17,012) and Fremont (16,734) have freeway bypasses.

Norwalk's high school sports teams are called the "Truckers".  I always thought it was because of heavy truck traffic through there, which isn't really the reason.  A Norwalk-based company formed in the mid-40's called Norwalk Truck Lines, which specialized in shipping various type of freight throughout the Midwest, was the inspiration, as detailed here:

http://www.norwalktruckers.net/Downloads/Why%20Are%20We%20the%20Truckers3.pdf

[theline]

This thread has been going 48 hours. I can't believe no one has made the obligatory mention of this town: https://goo.gl/maps/kJTRkKjPzZ4xi8mN6

[webny99]

This thread has been going 48 hours. I can't believe no one has made the obligatory mention of this town: https://goo.gl/maps/kJTRkKjPzZ4xi8mN6

Ah, of course. I briefly thought of that while crafting the OP, but I guess I'm thinking more of cases where the truck route runs right through town and a full freeway bypass of the town is needed, not just a revamped interchange. So more like if I-76 didn't exist and all those trucks were actually using US-30 for long distance travel, instead of just getting between the non-connected interstates.

[briantroutman]

Well, I suppose this calls into question what a "town"  is and what it means for truck traffic to be in the "heart of a small town" .

As has been observed before, Breezewood is not a town; it's not an incorporated municipality of any kind. But even setting technicalities aside, I'd argue that Breezewood lacks the attributes that make a town a town. In other words, it's not a community of residents centered around an identifiable town core with civic organizations, merchants selling at least basic necessities (groceries, general merchandise), a town bank, etc.

While a great deal of today's interstate truck traffic is on freeways, many trucking corridors are served primarily by non-limited access US and state routes, especially outside of the Northeast. And where these routes slice through a town, but do so on four or more lanes with broad setbacks in a mostly commercial/industrial landscape–like this scene on US 65 in Dumas, AR–I don't find that to be particularly remarkable.

I can't read the OP's mind, but to me, what would be novel about the notion of truck traffic on small town streets is this: Picture a quaint hamlet with its church on the town square, tidy homes, shopkeepers opening up for the morning, children walking down the sidewalk to school...and meanwhile, a continuous flow of tractor trailers roars down the narrow two-lane Main Street, making a 90° elbow at the town's lone signalized intersection.

Along those lines, I think there are better examples in the Susquehanna Valley than Lewisburg, since US 15 largely avoids the borough proper and is on a four-lane alignment that disregards Lewisburg's street grid, generally lacks sidewalks, and functions more like a commercially developed suburban/rural surface highway. US 15 also cuts through the Borough of Shamokin Dam on similar terms (also with high truck volumes), but that, too, doesn't feel much like the "heart of a small town"  in my opinion.

I'd say a better nearby example is Northumberland, where high volumes of trucks either connect between the US 11/15 corridor and PA 147/I-180 or simply follow US 11 or PA 147, all of which make somewhat tortured connections via the borough's streets. With Weis Markets' headquarters a few miles south on PA 147 Sunbury, another Weis DC just northeast on US 11, and numerous industries along both the 147 and 11 corridors–in addition to through traffic–Northumberland is quite a nexus of truck traffic considering its size.

[wriddle082]

I think Monroe, NC qualifies, though its population is now over 35k per 2018 estimates.  The tolled Monroe Bypass has done nothing to divert truck traffic away from US 74, probably because a lot of those trucks are headed towards US 601 and the Walmart Distribution Center in nearby Pageland, SC.  And the trucks that aren't going there are staying on 74 towards Wilmington.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Cook, MN, pop. 574 (US 53/MN 1) comes to mind as a candidate for me right at the meeting point of Minnesota's timber and mining industries. It's at the north end of the US 53 expressway and is strategic enough for a McDonald's.