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 (https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=15134.msg2851217#msg2851217), 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)
Quote from: vdeane on June 25, 2023, 09:19:15 PM
Quote from: Molandfreak on June 25, 2023, 06:04:03 PM
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.
Quote from: roadfro on June 25, 2023, 06:37:58 PM
Quote from: vdeane on June 25, 2023, 04:53:59 PM
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.
Quote from: sprjus4 on June 25, 2023, 05:50:45 PM
^ 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.
^ 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.
Quote from: vdeane on August 04, 2023, 10:16:33 PM
^ 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.
Quote from: vdeane on August 04, 2023, 10:16:33 PM
^ 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.
Quote from: kkt on August 05, 2023, 11:04:56 AM
Quote from: vdeane on August 04, 2023, 10:16:33 PM
^ 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?
Quote from: vdeane on August 05, 2023, 04:19:21 PM
Quote from: kkt on August 05, 2023, 11:04:56 AM
Quote from: vdeane on August 04, 2023, 10:16:33 PM
^ 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.
Quote from: vdeane on August 05, 2023, 04:19:21 PM
Quote from: kkt on August 05, 2023, 11:04:56 AM
Quote from: vdeane on August 04, 2023, 10:16:33 PM
^ 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!"
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.
Quote from: kkt on August 05, 2023, 06:18:36 PM
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.
Quote from: vdeane on August 05, 2023, 09:51:17 PM
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.
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
Quote from: cl94 on August 05, 2023, 10:53:59 PM
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.
Quote from: US 89 on August 06, 2023, 12:26:31 AM
Quote from: cl94 on August 05, 2023, 10:53:59 PM
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.
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.
Quote from: vdeane on August 06, 2023, 03:33:19 PM
Quote from: US 89 on August 06, 2023, 12:26:31 AM
Quote from: cl94 on August 05, 2023, 10:53:59 PM
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Quote from: cl94 on August 06, 2023, 09:28:33 PM
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.
Quote from: kkt on August 07, 2023, 12:03:10 AM
Quote from: cl94 on August 06, 2023, 09:28:33 PM
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.
Quote from: kkt on August 07, 2023, 12:03:10 AM
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.
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.
Quote from: kkt on August 07, 2023, 12:03:10 AM
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.
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.
Quote from: cl94 on August 07, 2023, 01:16:10 AM
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.
Quote from: US 89 on August 06, 2023, 07:50:57 PM
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.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on August 06, 2023, 09:11:06 PM
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.
I remember watching the movie "Snowbound" that I believe was based on a story involving snow on CA 299.
^^^
CA 299 lies on some of the most inhospitable terrain in California. It must have been truly miserable to be part of the mining boom up there, especially along the Trinity River.
Quote from: cl94 on August 07, 2023, 01:16:10 AM
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.
Amusingly the Nevada Highway Engineer made the argument for US 95 being extended early based off California wanting US 6 early even though the Ely-Delta corridor wasn't complete. You can definitely tell the Division of Highways has pull with AASHO early on that other western states didn't. I think that was especially evident with US 6 and the crazed US 64 proposal (which had a monster multiplex of US 66) bearing fruit with US 466 instead.
Quote from: Bruce on August 07, 2023, 02:18:16 AM
Quote from: US 89 on August 06, 2023, 07:50:57 PM
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.
Okay, but it's a rounding error from being a single state route. Idaho doesn't even think it exists and inventories it as a ramp. There are plenty of other important corridors in the west that don't cross a state line and so have never been considered for an upgrade to a fancy shield.
Utah SR 24, for example, is the lifeblood of Wayne County and a fairly significant tourist route. At least once Utah attempted to put a US route on it by extending US 24 west from Colorado, but AASH(T)O balked at the long concurrencies required in western Colorado and eastern Utah to get it there. If that were in two states instead of one, I'm sure it would have a 3dus designation today.
Quote from: US 89 on August 07, 2023, 08:56:19 AM
Quote from: Bruce on August 07, 2023, 02:18:16 AM
Quote from: US 89 on August 06, 2023, 07:50:57 PM
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.
Okay, but it's a rounding error from being a single state route. Idaho doesn't even think it exists and inventories it as a ramp. There are plenty of other important corridors in the west that don't cross a state line and so have never been considered for an upgrade to a fancy shield.
Utah SR 24, for example, is the lifeblood of Wayne County and a fairly significant tourist route. At least once Utah attempted to put a US route on it by extending US 24 west from Colorado, but AASH(T)O balked at the long concurrencies required in western Colorado and eastern Utah to get it there. If that were in two states instead of one, I'm sure it would have a 3dus designation today.
Utah probably should have asked for US 50 be realigned or US 50A. Having a highly visible alternate to I-70 in the Swell wouldn't be the worst idea.
Edit: What are the control cities on US 50 in Utah as presently defined? In theory if it goes Green River-Salina then Utah wouldn't really have much of a probably realigning the highway. That or sign US 50A without permission and ask for formal approval decades later like Nevada did.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on August 07, 2023, 09:22:23 AM
Utah probably should have asked for US 50 be realigned or US 50A. Having a highly visible alternate to I-70 in the Swell wouldn't be the worst idea.
Edit: What are the control cities on US 50 in Utah as presently defined? In theory if it goes Green River-Salina then Utah wouldn't really have much of a probably realigning the highway. That or sign US 50A without permission and ask for formal approval decades later like Nevada did.
The last time this was seriously proposed, I-70 didn't exist yet, and US 50 followed the route of modern US 6, so a hypothetical US 50A would have to go all the way out to Delta to reconnect with US 50. There was also a much more visible US 50A at the time that went through Wendover and Salt Lake. So short of designating the two alternates US 50N and US 50S, Tennessee style, at the time it probably wouldn't have been a great idea.
Control cities...I mean, US 50 completely disappears into I-70 between Salina and Grand Junction, and the control cities used across the Swell are generally Salina and Green River (except at the SR 10 exit where they use Denver eastbound for some reason). The thing is that AASHTO would never approve moving a US highway off an interstate in a case like this. I realize they've done it in North Carolina but that was for a city segment of US 17 in Wilmington, not a long distance rural corridor.
That's the thing, I don't think that AASHTO particularly cares about alignment shifts between control cities. The AASHTO Database during the 1930s is full of "don't bother us with this" replies for alignment shift applications between control points. I know locally from about 1936 onward California never bothered with applications for alignment shifts unless it involved a new control city.
My favorite example of this phenomenon is when US 66 was signed to Santa Monica by local agencies during 1931. AASHO pitched a fit to the DOH about the signage being truncated to Los Angeles since it was the final control city. They didn't care where in Los Angeles so long as it was the last city on the highway.
The way I see it, if a bureaucratic process isn't going to help your agency and there is an exploitative loop why not take it?
Quote from: US 89 on August 07, 2023, 08:56:19 AM
Okay, but it's a rounding error from being a single state route. Idaho doesn't even think it exists and inventories it as a ramp. There are plenty of other important corridors in the west that don't cross a state line and so have never been considered for an upgrade to a fancy shield.
For a time, US 195 was a single-state route because it had been truncated out of Idaho on its north end by the extension of US 2 and didn't get extended into Idaho until US 95 was rebuilt as an expressway, which is why ITD doesn't bother to acknowledge it as a full route in their inventory.
Quote from: The Ghostbuster on August 07, 2023, 12:36:50 PM
If the Business 93 designation is eventually decommissioned (due to 93 being truncated, or some other reason), would it be replaced by a Business 11 designation, or would NV 172 be extended westward? Given the history of highway redesignations in the Boulder City/Las Vegas area, I would expect the latter to happen.
It depends. Moreso on who maintains it than anything else. If 93 disappears from the area and NDOT maintains control, I'd assume it becomes an SR, potentially with BR 11 overlain on it. BR 11 is the most likely signed designation, if any exists, if it is downloaded to the county/city.
That being said, BR 93 is an oddity in Nevada because that is the only state-maintained business route without an underlying SR or FR. There is nothing preventing NDOT from designating it as IR 11B and calling it a day. It just has never been done before, and there isn't even precedent for a suffixed Interstate in Nevada. This is a slight difference from US 93B, which has some precedent in the form of US 93A, US 95A, US 395A, and the defunct US 40As.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on August 07, 2023, 10:14:03 AM
That's the thing, I don't think that AASHTO particularly cares about alignment shifts between control cities. The AASHTO Database during the 1930s is full of "don't bother us with this" replies for alignment shift applications between control points. I know locally from about 1936 onward California never bothered with applications for alignment shifts unless it involved a new control city.
My favorite example of this phenomenon is when US 66 was signed to Santa Monica by local agencies during 1931. AASHO pitched a fit to the DOH about the signage being truncated to Los Angeles since it was the final control city. They didn't care where in Los Angeles so long as it was the last city on the highway.
The way I see it, if a bureaucratic process isn't going to help your agency and there is an exploitative loop why not take it?
They cared for a while. See US 87 in Wyoming, which has an official gap because AASHTO wouldn't allow a realignment around slides along a slightly-inferior SR. I think that level of attention has come and gone, given how they have recently approved gaps in Colorado.
Quote from: cl94 on August 06, 2023, 09:28:33 PM
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.
And when they're inching along on chains over Siskiyou Summit on I-5 in the winter, it's generally just raining on US-199. That route was useful to me back in the 90s when I drove frequently between LA and Portland.
Quote from: cl94 on August 06, 2023, 07:29:52 PM
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.
I agree. I did a fictional renumbering scenario where I turned it into an extension of US-97. Basically you swap OR-39 and US-97, so the latter goes southeast to Susanville, junctions with US-395 there, then continues southward. It's always kind of bugged me that US-395 is an auxiliary route, even though that concept doesn't really exist in US highways in the first place. But it does feel like the really long, significant routes should have 1- or 2-digits instead of three.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on August 05, 2023, 04:44:45 PM
Quote from: vdeane on August 05, 2023, 04:19:21 PM
Quote from: kkt on August 05, 2023, 11:04:56 AM
Quote from: vdeane on August 04, 2023, 10:16:33 PM
^ 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.
I think this could have worked. I think Australia does something kind of similar, too. The issue is when you have new alignments that didn't exist prior to the Interstate era, I guess they'd just become auxiliaries (so the 5 between Wheeler Ridge and Red Bluff could be something like "Interstate" 499).
Quote from: cl94 on August 05, 2023, 10:53:59 PM
Quote from: vdeane on August 05, 2023, 09:51:17 PM
While thinking of this, I came up with another question - why wouldn't people know "interstate = freeway" out west?
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.
Plus, lots of non-interstate freeways in California. Just did another Reno to Santa Barbara drive a few days ago. Of the three routes that Google Maps usually suggests, the shortest and usually fastest has the least interstate and freeway miles. From our home in south Reno, it's usually I-580/US 395 (24 Interstate and freeway miles) - US 395 - CA 14 (freeway Mojave to Santa Clarita) - I-5 (10 Interstate miles) - CA 126 (freeway Santa Paula to Ventura) - US 101 (freeway).
The other routes it will offer are:
I-580 - I-80 - I-680 - US 101 and
I-580 - I-80 - I-5 - CA 41 - CA 46 - US 101
They're close in time - go north from our house ten miles to downtown Reno and it usually will have one of the I-80 routes as best. Of course, in winter, the weather forecast will factor into how I go. I'd rather deal with Donner and be done with mountains (the coastal mountains don't count for this) if snow is in the forecast than deal with US 395 and its four over 7,000 feet (two over 8,000 feet) mountain passes.
I've done all three and in good weather, 395 is by far the easiest driving given how little traffic there is (the only part I really dislike is Lancaster on CA 14 to exiting I-5 on to CA 126). Much more of the other routes is "tough" driving. Except for the towns, US 395 is all 65mph from Lee Vining to the CA 14 split as is CA 14 (70mph Mojave to Lancaster).
Quote from: Bruce on August 07, 2023, 05:00:31 PMFor a time, US 195 was a single-state route because it had been truncated out of Idaho on its north end by the extension of US 2 and didn't get extended into Idaho until US 95 was rebuilt as an expressway, which is why ITD doesn't bother to acknowledge it as a full route in their inventory.
What was the original routing of US Route 195?
Also, if I recall correctly, US Route 95 used to go through Washington before being realigned and taken out of Washington for whatever reason.
In North Dakota, any business routes off I-29 are marked as BUS US 81, but the I-94 ones are, well, BUS I-94 since there is no longer a concurrent US route. Not sure why that is.
This might be slightly off topic, but I'm also trying to figure out why there are four separate state routes/highways all numbered 200 across Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota instead of just having US Route 200. It's obvious they're all connected, so I wonder why it's like that. I mean, we don't have, for example, WA 97 or OR 97. Same with other highways, like US 2 or US 12, which also aren't separated into different state routes with the same number.
Quote from: Amaury on August 08, 2023, 06:09:23 PM
This might be slightly off topic, but I'm also trying to figure out why there are four separate state routes/highways all numbered 200 across Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota instead of just having US Route 200. It's obvious they're all connected, so I wonder why it's like that. I mean, we don't have, for example, WA 97 or OR 97. Same with other highways, like US 2 or US 12, which also aren't separated into different state routes with the same number.
AASHTO rejected multiple applicaitons to make 200 a US route because it wasn't seen as significant enough.
Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on August 08, 2023, 06:13:03 PM
Quote from: Amaury on August 08, 2023, 06:09:23 PM
This might be slightly off topic, but I'm also trying to figure out why there are four separate state routes/highways all numbered 200 across Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota instead of just having US Route 200. It's obvious they're all connected, so I wonder why it's like that. I mean, we don't have, for example, WA 97 or OR 97. Same with other highways, like US 2 or US 12, which also aren't separated into different state routes with the same number.
AASHTO rejected multiple applicaitons to make 200 a US route because it wasn't seen as significant enough.
Which is BS when you consider stuff like US 191 has multiple segments with less than 100 vehicles a day.
Quote from: Amaury on August 08, 2023, 05:45:23 PM
Quote from: Bruce on August 07, 2023, 05:00:31 PMFor a time, US 195 was a single-state route because it had been truncated out of Idaho on its north end by the extension of US 2 and didn't get extended into Idaho until US 95 was rebuilt as an expressway, which is why ITD doesn't bother to acknowledge it as a full route in their inventory.
What was the original routing of US Route 195?
Also, if I recall correctly, US Route 95 used to go through Washington before being realigned and taken out of Washington for whatever reason.
US 195 originally formed a full loop off US 95 with termini near Lewiston and in Sandpoint to the north.
As I mentioned in my previous post, US 95 was realigned out of WA when the expressway was built. It was probably simpler for Idaho to go it alone rather than need to cooperate and split costs with Washington, hence the curve that avoids the border.
Quote from: Amaury on August 08, 2023, 06:09:23 PM
This might be slightly off topic, but I'm also trying to figure out why there are four separate state routes/highways all numbered 200 across Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota instead of just having US Route 200. It's obvious they're all connected, so I wonder why it's like that. I mean, we don't have, for example, WA 97 or OR 97. Same with other highways, like US 2 or US 12, which also aren't separated into different state routes with the same number.
We do have WA/ID 128, OR 3/WA 129 (which used to be a branch of PSH 3), and the extremely short extensions of OR 35 and ID 41 that are on the books as WA 35 and WA 41. Multi-state routes with common numbers aren't uncommon even out west.
I'm not familiar with the full overview of 200 outside MN, but there was obviously interest in daisy-chaining this route together by the four states even without AASHTO allowing it to be a US route. In MN, the new TH 200 designation replaced the entirety of TH 31 from the North Dakota border to Walker, and then what was previously TH 34 east of Walker (where 34's east end was truncated to) around 1969-70.
Around the time I was born, most of the western US routes were literally paved over by Interstates, as opposed to running parallel like the eastern ones did. Perhaps the reason behind it was that with less populated areas, there really was no logic in having two through routes, so the Interstates acted as the replacement highways, with bypasses of the downtowns where necessary. I like the approach TX took in building its own freeways, where the frontage roads were made first, and the freeways came later. I really wish more states would build them this way.
Quote from: Henry on August 08, 2023, 10:46:31 PM
Around the time I was born, most of the western US routes were literally paved over by Interstates, as opposed to running parallel like the eastern ones did. Perhaps the reason behind it was that with less populated areas, there really was no logic in having two through routes, so the Interstates acted as the replacement highways, with bypasses of the downtowns where necessary.
This too. The distance between settled communities can be much greater in the west than in the east. There's no need for a separate non-freeway when there's nothing between towns except large ranches (served by local exits off the freeways) or nothing at all (public undeveloped land). Comparing two areas I know reasonably well, US 9 north of Albany still serves an important role connecting all the small towns from Albany to the border while there's very little between Reno and Colfax, CA that would justify having retained US 40 in addition to I-80 (old 40 still exists over Donner to serve some areas in there and a few other areas but absolutely nothing to justify a second through road - even in less than a year of living in Reno, I've already made four after midnight trips over Donner and realized just how little traffic there is on I-80 that time of day - a few hundred vehicles per hour - and even in day, there's so little (compared to the east) traffic on most rural western freeways (I-5 between L.A. and S.F. and I-15 between San Bernardino and Las Vegas being major exceptions) there's just no justification for a separate non-limited access road between communities.
Not to mention that even rural areas out east have enough development to preclude an upgrade in place (https://www.google.com/maps/@44.7501832,-73.112402,3a,71.6y,3.59h,89.44t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAMwrJopiMkc8I-eQN9DWtg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DAMwrJopiMkc8I-eQN9DWtg%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D80.89796%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu).
Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on August 08, 2023, 06:54:30 PM
I'm not familiar with the full overview of 200 outside MN, but there was obviously interest in daisy-chaining this route together by the four states even without AASHTO allowing it to be a US route. In MN, the new TH 200 designation replaced the entirety of TH 31 from the North Dakota border to Walker, and then what was previously TH 34 east of Walker (where 34's east end was truncated to) around 1969-70.
ID 200 and MT 200 west of US 93 alone would make for a viable US Route. I'd argue the proposal should have included WA 20 at least to US 97 if not I-5.
At least in the part of the country I'm in, there isn't a set hierarchy of US routes over state routes like what you might see in the west (or at least that's the impression I'm getting from reading this thread). Plenty of examples of state routes being more important than a parallel US route, like IN 63 replacing US 41 as an expressway route for through traffic north of Terre Haute, and a similar case with OH 32 over US 50 for Cincinnati to Athens and the OH 2 freeway replacing US 6 and US 20 in the Cleveland area.
Quote from: Quillz on August 08, 2023, 04:32:36 PM
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on August 05, 2023, 04:44:45 PM
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.
I think this could have worked. I think Australia does something kind of similar, too.
If you mean the M-A-B-C grading, yes, although this is not consistent since not all the states are on that system.
If you mean the old NH-NR distinction, that was closer to US route vs Interstate, even though most NH alignments were not freeways and most NRs were sealed through routes (compare with Tracks). SRs were always sui generis as they are here.
Folks have touched on this item, but I think it bears further explanation.
East of the Mississippi pre-1950, the US had much more of the population than west of the Mississippi, and there was a greater demand earlier for road building. Many of the important US highways were built out before the development of high-speed roadway design standards, including access management. These routes would not be suitable for later in-place upgrades to Interstate-standard freeway.
Road funding was also less free-flowing, partially due to the Great Depression and WWII, so what improvements were made were done with a short-term mindset rather than with considerations 50 or 100 years down the road. Therefore, there generally was no simple widening of important US routes; typically they were supplanted by tollways like the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Indiana Toll Road, or New Jersey Turnpike, or later by a federally-funded Interstate highway.
Out west, those tollway/Interstate highway improvements came later on, and more sparsely, than out east. However, they also were later to the game with highway improvements in general. At that point, those US routes not supplanted by Interstates were being built out to more modern standards, including more gradual curves (both horizontal and vertical), wider Right-of-Way, and more room for later widening as needed. The fact that there were fewer homes/farms/businesses encroaching on the ROW needed to begin with facilitated use of these modern standards, and there were fewer NIMBYs to have to appease to get a road built. These differences allowed higher speed limits to allow people to safely reach their more far-flung destinations faster, in many cases on par with a comparable Interstate highway.