Largest city without a bypass

[Inyomono395]

What is the largest city to not have a Highway bypass?

Eureka California has a urban population of roughly 45000. U.S. 101 downgrades from a freeway to city streets with no bypass.

Carson City Nevada with a population of roughly 55000 would have been a good Contender but with the last leg of the bypass under construction they are out of the running.

I'm curious to see what the largest city is without a bypass, and why.

[NE2]

Albuquerque (550K) appears to be the largest U.S. city with no freeway bypass, unless you count El Paso (680K).

[jakeroot]

Aberdeen, Scotland has no bypass (yet). The population is just short of 200k.

I think this is a hard question to answer, because many cities (including Aberdeen) that once had bypasses, had their bypasses engulfed by suburbia.

[Jardine]

Except for an iffy strip from the 48th st to the 72nd street exits, I-680 has been assimilated into Omaha.  I've seen an old picture of the I-80 and 84th street exit and it was cornfields there when built.

A possible 4 lane 'something' down Platteview Road is being absorbed into suburbia and it isn't even built yet.


A case might be made to extend the Iowa portion of I-680 at Loveland westward (skirting DeSoto Bend on the south) and looping around west Omaha and hitting up with I-80 halfway to Lincoln somewhere, but I could see that being absorbed into a metro melange rapidly too.

Considering bedrock is 90' (m/l)underneath the Missouri River, and most of the overburden is super soft and 200-250' thick, is there a cheaper place to consider TBMing  a bypass than Omaha ??


(not sure if that last bit is serious or not at this point)

[english si]

Aberdeen, Scotland has no bypass (yet).

It does, but (as you say) suburbia engulfed it, making it functionally not a bypass. I'd argue that freeways are bypassing the city streets, even if they go through the urban area.

Aylesbury has 75000 in it's urban area, with an estimated population above 100k in the next 15 years. It's the largest non-coastal urban area in the UK that doesn't have a bypass (nor one built that was absorbed by development), and the most recent set of plans (for a link between two of the radials and a fast link road bypassing suburbs from that road into the centre) have been converted into plans for a 30mph distributor through a large housing development, so unlike Aberdeen (whose freeway bypass is under construction), it won't be getting one soon.

As for why - apparently only 11% of traffic is through traffic. But that's a bit chicken and egg - people avoid the town, using other routes, rather have to slog through the town for 20 minutes. I'd imagine Wendover to Birmingham would route via Princes Risborough and Thame to pick up the M40 at J8, rather than through Aylesbury to J9.

[CobaltYoshi27]

What is the largest city to not have a Highway bypass?

Eureka California has a urban population of roughly 45000. U.S. 101 downgrades from a freeway to city streets with no bypass.

Carson City Nevada with a population of roughly 55000 would have been a good Contender but with the last leg of the bypass under construction they are out of the running.

I'm curious to see what the largest city is without a bypass, and why.

Albuquerque, New Mexico? It has about 550,000 people, and only I-25 and I-40 through it. No bypasses. And Tucson, Arizona has 525,000 people with just I-10 and I-19. Once again, no bypasses.

[Max Rockatansky]

Reno is pretty up there with 233,000 people.  Granted US 395 (sorry I-580) and I-80 get all the cardinal directions through the city itself.  I'm assuming you mean freeway bypass and not standard surface highway.  Some other notables I thought of:

St George, UT:  Almost 79,000 people and I-15 is the direct route through town.  Granted UT 7 might serve as one in the future.
Bakersfield, CA:  Almost 370,000 people and no true bypass route.  CA 178 doesn't even connect to CA 99 while CA 58 and 99 are cardinal directional routes.  Even 58 being built west as a freeway doesn't serve as a bypass.
Las Cruces, NM:  I-10 and I-25 basically serve through traffic and even US 70 does the eastern part of the city.  US 70 kinda sorta serves as a surface level bypass, granted one that skates the edge of down town through the city....more a short cut really.  The city just 100,000 residents in the last couple years.
Roswell, NM:  How about no freeways period and a population of 48,000?  Granted there is a significant US 70 bypass on the western part of the city on a surface route.
Flagstaff, AZ:  68,000 people and I-17 dead ends right outside down town while I-40 runs east/west.  No bypass route of any form to be found here.
Lake Havasu City, AZ:  No freeway and no bypass with 52,000 residents.  Granted AZ 95 is a fairly decent expressway that is fairly well divided from the rest of the civic development.
Yuma, AZ:  93,000 residents and no freeway bypass of the city.  I-8 doesn't really skirt too close to the major urban development and AZ 195 is slated to become a bypass towards the border eventually.
Redding, CA:  90,000 residents and it only has I-5 traveling north/south and a small portion of CA 44 as an east/west freeway.
Provo, UT:  112,000 residents and no true bypass route.  US 89 and US 189 exist as surface routes away from I-15.
Boise, ID:  205,000 residents with no true bypass of I-84.  There is a I-184 but it is mainly a feeder freeway for downtown.
Bend, OR:  83,000 people with no freeway or true bypass routes.
Olympia, WA:  47,000 residents with no bypass route.  Granted US 101 and I-5 serve as major freeways in most cardinal directions.
Spokane, WA:  208,000 residents and no bypass.  I-90 serves as east/west as a freeway and US 395 is slowly being built as the north/south freeway.  Same thing out in CDA, ID with just I-90 and no freeway bypass route.
Billings, MT:  I-90/I-94 meet east of the city but no freeway bypass with 110,000 residents.
Grand Junction, CO:  58,000 residents with I-70 as the only freeway.  No major surface bypass even.
St. Petersburg and Tampa, FL;  St. Pete has 260,000 residents with US 19 and I-275 serving as the primary routes/freeways through the city.  US 19 is being built up as a freeway towards Clearwater and there are spur freeways for 275, no bypasses.  Tampa at 346,000 is much of the same although I-75 being realigned to the east of downtown sort of serves the purpose to an extent.  Both cities really need a freeway connecting from US 19 in Clearwater running east roughly along the alignment of FL 54 to relieve the bottle necks heading into the cities. 

[Rothman]

I-15 essentially goes around downtown Provo, anyway. Not sure where you'd put a bypass where it would serve any actual purpose:  Utah Lake on the west; Wasatch Front on the east.

[Max Rockatansky]

I-15 essentially goes around downtown Provo, anyway. Not sure where you'd put a bypass where it would serve any actual purpose:  Utah Lake on the west; Wasatch Front on the east.

Yeah that's true with a lot of cities that the downtown was bypassed.  I took the OP to mean something like an even number 3di Interstate or spur route branching traffic away completely.  That example I gave with I75 heading east of downtown Tampa is just like that.  Hell the OP could have meant no surface bypasses either but I took it to be a freeway example.

[Inyomono395]

Thanks for the responses and all the information! Sorry if I didn't word things very clearly. I meant no bypasses whatsoever. (Freeway, expressway, surface streets)

I now have another question along the same lines. What is the largest city to have no freeway at all?

[hotdogPi]

I now have another question along the same lines. What is the largest city to have no freeway at all?

https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=11189

[Inyomono395]

Thank you! I thought I searched for that before I posted the question but apparently I didn't haha

[SP Cook]

This is one of those questions that depends on what you mean by "bypass".  Do you mean that to travel the city one must drop down to city street level?  Or simply that the one and only interstate goes through the city center with no practical alternative?  Or even that whatever the "bypass" is, is it such that a motorist would not encounter either the city center, be within the city limits, or encounter what a reasonable person would consider an "urban" or perhaps even "suburban" or "built up" area? 

[Jardine]

Bypass ?

I'd say a 4 lane route 'bypassing' any significantly built up areas of the city.  Truck stops at interchanges are nearly unavoidable, but a route adrift in a sea of brick  a brack and ticky tacky urban and suburban sprawl isn't really bypassing anything, is it ?

[jeffandnicole]

Bypass ?

I'd say a 4 lane route 'bypassing' any significantly built up areas of the city.  Truck stops at interchanges are nearly unavoidable, but a route adrift in a sea of brick  a brack and ticky tacky urban and suburban sprawl isn't really bypassing anything, is it ?

It's still a bypass.  Then the bypass became busy, and companies figured, why not build things along the bypass?  Then the town/county says, sure, you can build there!  It's still a bypass of a downtown area, even if it's just as busy and crowded as the direct route.

Many interstate bypasses work in this fashion also.  Nearly all I-2xx, 4xx, 6xx and 8xx routes are bypasses, even though they are often just as congested if not more so than the 2di being bypassed.

[texaskdog]

Winnipeg has a loop around the city which is completely unpractical for anyone who lives there to use.

[jakeroot]

Winnipeg has a loop around the city which is completely unpractical for anyone who lives there to use.

Bypass, as defined by wikipedia:

A bypass is a road or highway that avoids or "bypasses" a built-up area, town, or village, to let through traffic flow without interference from local traffic, to reduce congestion in the built-up area, and to improve road safety.

My point being, if it's not practical for those who live there, it's performing its duty exactly as it was designed.

Anthony Henday Drive in Edmonton has the same purpose. And, to an extent, so does Stoney Trail around (most of) Calgary.

[mariethefoxy]

New Haven CT unless you count CT 15 as a bypass of New Haven

[tckma]

Well, that depends what you mean by "bypass."  MD-30's official name around Hampstead, MD is "Hampstead Bypass."  It was built because when MD-30 was using what is now Business MD-30, the traffic was apparently unbearable.  I didn't live in the state then.  The so-called "bypass" is just a two lane farm country road through undeveloped land.

[pianocello]

Lethbridge, Alberta has 89,000 residents, and there doesn't appear to be much of a bypass.

[Tom958]

Dayton, OH was my first, best guess, with no bypass for I-75 and a metro population of well over 800k.

[CobaltYoshi27]

Dayton, OH was my first, best guess, with no bypass for I-75 and a metro population of well over 800k.

Does I-675 not count?

[GCrites]

Aberdeen, Scotland has no bypass (yet). The population is just short of 200k.

I think this is a hard question to answer, because many cities (including Aberdeen) that once had bypasses, had their bypasses engulfed by suburbia.

I propose leaving out non-US cities since the philosophy in the rest of the world was to not necessarily bypass the cities in order to maintain the existing local economies.

[tdindy88]

Dayton, OH was my first, best guess, with no bypass for I-75 and a metro population of well over 800k.

Does I-675 not count?

I would think that it counts. I understand from driving along I-75 that it does not allow you to bypass the city, but a bypass is a bypass and what may not bypass a city to you may for others.

[english si]

I propose leaving out non-US cities since the philosophy in the rest of the world was to not necessarily bypass the cities in order to maintain the existing local economies.

WTF? In the UK, we bypassed cities in order to maintain the existing local economies. We Brits tend to be very surprised that the US sends main routes through the town as we are so keen on bypasses. Therefore it is relevant.

There's a few small rural locations where their economy was based entirely on serving stopping traffic and they get either signs saying that there's services or a new service area on the outskirts, but in the most part, we try and take through traffic away from towns.

Which makes Aberdeen, Aylesbury, etc even more odd - these are big places and through traffic doesn't go round them, but rather through them.