Favorite Types of Highways to drive on

[Duke87]

Generally speaking my favorite kind of road to drive on is the type that has hills and curves that let you really hit the sweet spot on cornering. Basically, a road that's curvy enough to keep your hands and feet busy, but not so curvy as to keep you well below 55 the whole time.

That said I do also love poking around cities, so long as traffic doesn't turn it into a huge slog.

[US 41]

Personal suggestion to the above-poll: if it's the OP's intent to include highways that wider than 4 lanes in the above 4-lane categories; then such should be relabeled as 4+ lanes. 

Many of my personal favorite roads/highways to drive on are all wider than 4 lanes.  That said, I don't mind driving on 2-laners along more open, rural stretches... as long as there are some passing zones along the way.

Added "or more" at the end of 4 lane limited access. I didn't really think about interstates in the cities. 2 lane limited access highways I guess can be considered as 2 lane highways with shoulders unless they happen to be a toll road.

[Pete from Boston]

Also, I like highways that follow rivers.  They tend to help illustrate the story of the river's meaning to the people that settled along it.

[PHLBOS]

Added "or more" at the end of 4 lane limited access. I didn't really think about interstates in the cities. 2 lane limited access highways I guess can be considered as 2 lane highways with shoulders unless they happen to be a toll road.

Not all freeways wider than 4 lanes are in cities.  One example being the 8-lane stretch of I-95 in MA from the Danvers/Peabody line to Newburyport just south of the Whittier Bridge (one of my favorite roads) certainly isn't in nor going through cities.

Thanks for the updating the listing(s) BTW.

[riiga]

Two-lane highways with wide shoulders, a road type formerly very common here, but nowadays replaced with 2+1 roads.

Typical example of this kind of wide road.

[GCrites]

What exactly is a 2+1 road? How does it work? I see the striping is different.

[riiga]

What exactly is a 2+1 road? How does it work? I see the striping is different.

A two-lane highway with passing lanes every other mile or so. One side has 2 lanes for about a mile, the other just 1. Then they alternate. Like this:


It's a very cost-effective way of converting wide two-lane highways into safer expressway-like roads, especially the addition of a barrier has lowered head-on collisions on these roads to pretty much zero. More info on Wikipedia.

MoDOT has built at least one that I'm aware of, on MO-5 between Camdenton and Lebanon. No barriers there though for some reason.

[J N Winkler]

MoDOT has built at least one that I'm aware of, on MO-5 between Camdenton and Lebanon. No barriers there though for some reason.

The 2+1 concept has not taken off in the US partly because design criteria are somewhat different.  If memory serves, the Swedish design manual advocates the 2+1 cross section as the ultimate improvement for roads with AADTs between 8,000 and 12,000 where significant increases in traffic are not expected.  In the US the binary rule of thumb is to widen to four-lane divided beginning at AADTs of over 10,000 in flat country, dropping to 7,000 in hilly country and as low as 5,000 in the mountains.  Usual practice in the US is simply to add passing lanes to two-lane state highways whose AADT values creep close to levels that justify four-laning, rather than to rebuild the road completely to provide a more or less continuous three-lane cross-section.

[kkt]

In the U.S., most 2-lane roads with frequent passing intervals don't use a fixed 3-lane cross section.  They may be 2 lanes for a while, then 3 lanes for one direction to pass, or 4 lanes in a place where land is available allowing both directions to pass.

[MikeTheActuary]

My favorite kind of road is one that is free-flowing.

I like the aesthetics of 2-lane roads over freeways, but at least in the eastern half of the US, the tendency for speed limits to change frequently due to towns, etc. kind of spoils the free-flowing effect for me.

[cjk374]

What exactly is a 2+1 road? How does it work? I see the striping is different.

A two-lane highway with passing lanes every other mile or so. One side has 2 lanes for about a mile, the other just 1. Then they alternate. Like this:


It's a very cost-effective way of converting wide two-lane highways into safer expressway-like roads, especially the addition of a barrier has lowered head-on collisions on these roads to pretty much zero. More info on Wikipedia.

MoDOT has built at least one that I'm aware of, on MO-5 between Camdenton and Lebanon. No barriers there though for some reason.

Is this what you are refering to also?  US 371 between Dixie Inn and Cotton Valley, LA.: https://www.google.com/maps/@32.6770105,-93.372881,89m/data=!3m1!1e3

[3467]

Missouri has reported good success with 2 plus 1 on MO 5 and US 63 Missouri calls them shared 4 lanes . Mo has budget issues and was thinking over building  expressways in a bunch of corridors that had volumes in the 3-6000 range in rural areas with very limited growth potential . I think they are a good alternate in areas where politics calls for a road improvement more than traffic volumes

[bulldog1979]

My hometown is 3 hours from a freeway, and trips to see my grandparents as a kid only involved about 26 miles of freeway travel out of 200. Even though I've lived in larger cities with freeways, it's still a bit of a joy and novelty to drive longer distances on a freeway.

[empirestate]

My favorite class of roads overall is exemplified by Pennsylvania's quadrant route system, in particular the rural or semi-rural two-lane roads that traverse the countryside and connect small villages, boroughs and light suburban areas. They tend to have a very intimate relationship with the landscape they pass through, are not over-engineered so as to lose any sense of the topography (and thus, yes, less safe than they might be), and offer a continuous string of pleasant, interesting or surprising sights along their path. While I appreciate the grand, distant views offered by some roads with longer straight sections, I prefer the changing, unexpected scenery of curvy roads, where you never know what's around the next bend.

But I didn't vote for "narrow 2-lane highway", even though that certainly describes the type of road I like, because one other benefit of the quadrant system is that it is a unified system and so it has some consistency. While the standards are not as high as state highways elsewhere, you can still expect a certain level of quality on a quadrant-route trip, knowing that you're not going to end up on a rutted dirt road that goes miles through nothingness, and may actually be impassable, even though on a map it may look like a through route. Other states have similar secondary state systems, but in most parts of New York you'd look to the county road system for this kind of trip, whereas in New England these would all be town roads.

So to reflect the position of these roads within the hierarchy, not only of governmental position but also of character within the landscape, I voted for "county roads (paved somehow)".

[wphiii]

My favorite class of roads overall is exemplified by Pennsylvania's quadrant route system, in particular the rural or semi-rural two-lane roads that traverse the countryside and connect small villages, boroughs and light suburban areas. They tend to have a very intimate relationship with the landscape they pass through, are not over-engineered so as to lose any sense of the topography (and thus, yes, less safe than they might be), and offer a continuous string of pleasant, interesting or surprising sights along their path. While I appreciate the grand, distant views offered by some roads with longer straight sections, I prefer the changing, unexpected scenery of curvy roads, where you never know what's around the next bend.

[nexus73]

Freeways are the safest routes for long distance travel.  If I am doing Point A to Point B trips and a freeway is available, I'll use it.  On the other hand if I am doing a poke into corners deal then I'll take any road to any corner I want to go to and enjoy the ride!

Favorite freeway drive: SoCal when the roads are empty at night and I hit the brights to make the Botts dots light up spectacularly.  That was so entrancing to me in the mid 70's.  It was like playing a driving video game before such a thing even existed!

Rick

[slorydn1]

I voted for limited access/Interstates because going back to my young days as a small child "navigating" from the back seat I always enjoyed matching up what I was seeing on the map with the BGS's we were coming up to. Sometimes on trips to places we had never been before, I would even try to guess the layout of the next signs (route number, control cities, etc).

That love of the open road never left me during my adult years. Yeah, I'm doing the driving now, and I'm not alternating between looking at a map and out the window, but I still like the free flow of an Interstate, the strategy of the give and take between passing and being passed.

All that said, the last couple of years are the first time in my life that I have had cars that make twisty two lane mountain roads a lot of fun to drive. The Tail of the Dragon, Smokey Mountain Parkway, really any of the roads in western NC/eastern TN are an absolute blast to drive in a high horsepower, manual transmission car, an experience that I recommend everyone try at least once in their life, even if they have to rent one. 

[Darkchylde]

I picked the 4-lane divided, unlimited access option. Honestly, though, I just prefer the roads wide, whether or not they're access-controlled.

[Truvelo]

I like remote scenic roads the best where you can see for miles and where there's always a different view around each bend.

Something like this tops my list:

[bugo]

I love to drive on high speed freeways. The higher the speed limit, the better. I also like driving on high quality modern 2 lane highways (US 259 north of Broken Bow is a great road to drive at high speeds as long as you don't get behind a truck.)

I also like to drive on old alignments of highways. Concrete highways are the best, and many of these old highways have old truss bridges. Oklahoma is full of these.

I hate driving on curvy, hilly 2 lane roads with poor geometry. Arkansas is full of these roads. They aren't fun to drive on at all.

[bugo]

What exactly is a 2+1 road? How does it work? I see the striping is different.

Missouri calls them "shared 4 lanes" (a misnomer). They can be very dangerous. US 70 from Hot Springs to Benton in Arkansas is one of these 3 lane highways and I hate driving it because despite having a 55 MPH speed limit, it feels like you can go faster which isn't a good idea.

[bugo]

My hometown is 3 hours from a freeway, and trips to see my grandparents as a kid only involved about 26 miles of freeway travel out of 200. Even though I've lived in larger cities with freeways, it's still a bit of a joy and novelty to drive longer distances on a freeway.

I grew up about 1 1/2 miles from a freeway (I-540) so it was a treat to drive on a freeway when I first started driving. This was the nearest highway with a speed limit of more than 55 until Oklahoma raised their speed limits on 2 lane highways to 65 (something Arkansas needs to do). Now I live within a few feet from a freeway so it's not such a big deal.

[riiga]

They can be very dangerous. US 70 from Hot Springs to Benton in Arkansas is one of these 3 lane highways and I hate driving it because despite having a 55 MPH speed limit, it feels like you can go faster which isn't a good idea.

It seems that main safety benefit of the typical 2+1 road is missing at both that stretch and the one I mentioned. They're supposed to have a center guard rail or wire barrier to prevent fatal crashes. Then the speed limit could be raised to 60/65 MPH, whichever is closest to about 100 km/h.

Like this:

[US 41]

I like remote scenic roads the best where you can see for miles and where there's always a different view around each bend.

Something like this tops my list:

I love driving on desert roads. It literally feels like your driving where an old western movie was shot. There is also very lttle traffic which makes it relaxing.

[Duke87]

The 2+1 concept has not taken off in the US partly because design criteria are somewhat different.  If memory serves, the Swedish design manual advocates the 2+1 cross section as the ultimate improvement for roads with AADTs between 8,000 and 12,000 where significant increases in traffic are not expected.  In the US the binary rule of thumb is to widen to four-lane divided beginning at AADTs of over 10,000 in flat country, dropping to 7,000 in hilly country and as low as 5,000 in the mountains.  Usual practice in the US is simply to add passing lanes to two-lane state highways whose AADT values creep close to levels that justify four-laning, rather than to rebuild the road completely to provide a more or less continuous three-lane cross-section.

Also of note, the 2+1 concept generally involves taking a 2 lane road with full shoulders and converting it to a 3 lane road with little shoulder space. US design standards really hate the idea of a high speed road not having wide shoulders.

Beyond that, the value of keeping the road within a narrow footprint is lost on most of the US since land is cheap. This is the same reason why rural motorways in Europe usually maintain the same narrow medians they have in urban areas, while in the US this is uncommon and would be considered substandard.