Largest city without a freeway of any type

[agentsteel53]

Finding suburbs where the freeways just barely miss the corporate boundary seems like a cop out.

In that case, the

"Longest Distance from the Closest City/Town boundary to Any Limited-Access Highway, Yet Still Big Enough to Have Significant Population (like a McDonald's or a couple of stoplights)"

might be the best way to phrase the topic, except that's as wide-open as a topic could get.

for all points A on the surface of the Earth: find the nearest point B which is located on a freeway.  construct a circle with center A, and B on its edge.  count the number of people in this circle.  find the point A for which this value is a maximum.  there is your answer.

[hotdogPi]

Finding suburbs where the freeways just barely miss the corporate boundary seems like a cop out.

In that case, the

"Longest Distance from the Closest City/Town boundary to Any Limited-Access Highway, Yet Still Big Enough to Have Significant Population (like a McDonald's or a couple of stoplights)"

might be the best way to phrase the topic, except that's as wide-open as a topic could get.

for all points A on the surface of the Earth: find the nearest point B which is located on a freeway.  construct a circle with center A, and B on its edge.  count the number of people in this circle.  find the point A for which this value is a maximum.  there is your answer.

For the United States, I think it would be centered in Brooklyn. Of course, that's not the whole world.

[agentsteel53]

For the United States, I think it would be centered in Brooklyn. Of course, that's not the whole world.

there may be a way to compensate for extreme population density to bring the metric back in line with what the question is attempting to intend.  for each person in the circle, don't just count "1" but rather something like their distance from the point, or the reciprocal of that distance, or whatever.  things can be tuned.

[Alps]

Finding suburbs where the freeways just barely miss the corporate boundary seems like a cop out.

In that case, the

"Longest Distance from the Closest City/Town boundary to Any Limited-Access Highway, Yet Still Big Enough to Have Significant Population (like a McDonald's or a couple of stoplights)"

might be the best way to phrase the topic, except that's as wide-open as a topic could get.

for all points A on the surface of the Earth: find the nearest point B which is located on a freeway.  construct a circle with center A, and B on its edge.  count the number of people in this circle.  find the point A for which this value is a maximum.  there is your answer.

*stands immediately next to the freeway, wins*

[Bickendan]

Bend .OR  (80,000)
Roswell, NM (48,000)
Lewiston, ID (30,000)
Logan ,UT (35,000)
Sierra Vista, AZ  (35,000)

US 97 is a full freeway through much of Bend, OR.

Mike

Yep, Bend's disqualified.

Aloha, however, makes the cut. It is, however, unincorporated, but it is its own distinct geographical place.
Hillsboro disqualifies: US 26 runs along its northern boundary.

[NE2]

Aloha's just another suburb.

[djlynch]

The Woodlands, TX- Pop 105,000
Tyler, TX- Pop 100,000

The 2010 Census boundaries for The Woodlands are drawn down the centerline of the I-45 west frontage in places and include the ends of the direct connectors to/from Woodlands Parkway. To say it doesn't have a freeway is really splitting hairs.

There's a portion of Texas 49 within the city limits of Tyler, including the junction with US 69.

Wylie (44,000) and Keller (42,000) are the largest cities without a freeway in or next to the city limits, but they're both in the DFW metroplex, so there's plenty of freeways around.

Del Rio (35,000) seems to be the largest without any freeways in the immediate area.

[kkt]

For Washington, Sammamish, WA (which doesn't have a post office) with almost 50,000.  SR-520 and I-90 comes close, but not quite.  Next would be Edmonds (isolated from I-5; SR-104 connects I-5 to the ferry terminal, but it's not a freeway) and then Bremerton if SR-3 doesn't enter its city limits.

Wenatchee has 32,000 and no freeways as close as they are to Sammamish or Edmonds.

[mgk920]

Finding suburbs where the freeways just barely miss the corporate boundary seems like a cop out.  Great, we found 70,000 people between the spokes of a metro area's freeway system.  I think it's more interesting to find those Roswells and Lewistons and Sierra Vistas that are off on their own and have nothing freeway-like at all.

For example, in Wisconsin, the largest city that 'technically' doesn't have a freeway is the Milwaukee suburb of Franklin (~35k).  But just barely, so who cares?  Wisconsin Rapids (~18k), on the other hand, is the more interesting example because it's the largest city not served by any freeway at all in the state. (Marshfield is larger by a little bit and now has a couple miles of freeway on US 10 flanking the one interchange).  The fact that every community over 20k in the state is served, directly or almost directly by freeway mileage is an interesting statistic worth comparing.

Nope - Racine (2010 USCensus 78,860) has no freeways within its corporate limits.  I-41/94 passes well west of the city.

Mike

[kurumi]

Largest in Connecticut is Bristol (CT 72 freeway section ends just short of the Bristol TL in Plainville).

Population estimate in 2013: 60,568 (state rank: 13)

Beyond that, there's a steep dropoff:
New Milford: 27,474 (39)
Ridgefield: 25,205 (45)
Simsbury: 23,975 (47)
Monroe: 19,867 (57)

78 of the top 100 towns are served by a freeway. 109 of 169 towns overall have a freeway.

[mariethefoxy]

Hockessin DE has 13,427

Long Beach NY has 33,552

Keene NH has 23,419

[TheHighwayMan3561]

In Minnesota it's Andover (33K), which is also the largest city in the state without any state maintained roads.

[SignGeek101]

Really wish we had a freeway in my city of 700 000. To be fair, some parts are expressway status (a few minor farm roads at-grade, with cloverleafs), but that's as good as it gets.

Probably the largest up here.

[jwolfer]

One that's not a suburb in the ordinary sense (but also not incorporated as a city/town/etc., though it has a well-defined boundary): The Villages, FL, 51K population. Florida's state song describes it perfectly: Old Folks at Home. It's also the Teabaggistani capital.

Also some of the highest rates of STDs in the state of Florida.. Granny and grandad are getting busy!
My friend was a nurse practitioner there.  They are not worried at all about pregnancy, who needs protection

[lordsutch]

One that's not a suburb in the ordinary sense (but also not incorporated as a city/town/etc., though it has a well-defined boundary): The Villages, FL, 51K population.

It is (they are?) expanding rapidly toward the Turnpike, though, so that may no longer be true within a decade or so.

In Georgia's case, it might actually be Warner Robins (population 66,588 in 2010), as the city seems to have deliberately avoided annexing the I-75 right-of-way even though there is at least one parcel west of I-75 that is in the city limits somehow. That said, as discussed above Peachtree City is probably the biggest city in the state without any real freeway service (and it probably needs it).

[DandyDan]

For Nebraska, Grand Island doesn't get as far south as I-80, so that would have to be it.  It does have a couple of interchanges, though.  Hastings probably has a more legitimate claim to that title, though.

[vdeane]

Really wish we had a freeway in my city of 700 000. To be fair, some parts are expressway status (a few minor farm roads at-grade, with cloverleafs), but that's as good as it gets.

Probably the largest up here.

If they ever get rid of the at-grades on Winnipeg's beltway...

[ftballfan]

In Michigan, discounting suburbs, contenders include:
Adrian
Alpena
Escanaba
Iron Mountain
Marquette
Traverse City

[Rick Powell]

McHenry County, IL, a 300k+ population county, has a little bit of I-90 going thru it but no interchange. All the larger municipalities except for Huntley (which has an interchange at IL 47 in its Kane County portion) could be in the running, especially if you look at distance to the nearest. Crystal Lake, McHenry, Woodstock?

[lepidopteran]

For Ohio, the winner would be Delaware (36,459).  Although US-23 does have a short limited-access section through the center of town, it is not "colored" as such on Google Maps.  There was apparently a plan once to make US-23 part of a new I-73 by connecting it to I-71 south of the reservoir, but by now I doubt that will ever happen.

An even greater winner would be Hamilton (62,258), but a lateral freeway was built to connect it to I-75, though granted it does not touch the city limits.

Next would be Oxford (21,740).

[lepidopteran]

In Pennsylvania, the hands-down winner appears to be Lebanon, at 25,524.

[formulanone]

Dothan, Alabama seems to one of the largest population centers (65,000) without any freeways, with distant freeway access. Throw in the Ozark Micropolitan area, and it exceeds 140,000.

Even from the southernmost reaches of its incorporated borders, it's still about 29-30 miles north of I-10, using the most direct route.

[dvferyance]

McHenry County, IL, a 300k+ population county, has a little bit of I-90 going thru it but no interchange. All the larger municipalities except for Huntley (which has an interchange at IL 47 in its Kane County portion) could be in the running, especially if you look at distance to the nearest. Crystal Lake, McHenry, Woodstock?

But there is an interchange planned at IL-23.

[kphoger]

Del Rio (35,000) seems to be the largest without any freeways in the immediate area.

Go just a few miles to the other side of the border, and Ciudad Acuña has a population of 180,000 but no freeway.

In Mexico, the city of Aguascalientes is well known for having a population of more than 900,000 (metro more than 1 million) but no freeway.