Not going the whole 100 yards

[roadman65]

If PennDOT connected I-70 to the Penna Turnpike when it was built the box of Pandora would have never opened.  The added cars and trucks to US 30 when the interstate was built would have never graced the streets of Breezewood that now gives them their economy.

That should have all been done back then, as the original Breezewood interchange on the Turnpike was only a simple connection between the toll road and the US route.  Businesses there were only relying on some motorists to stop there at that time and that was it.  Give them more patrons even if its only temporary, will get them used to another realm that they do not want to ever go back to the original one.

So not going the whole 100 yards here for sure.

[doorknob60]

South of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, SR 99 comes so close to connecting up with other freeways, but fails. First, you have the partial West Seattle Bridge (freeway) interchange, with no way to get to or from I-5, then a short gap of surface street, and then the horrible 99/509 interchange, with no obvious through path for SR 99.

Yeah, my last trip to Seattle, we were staying at a hotel next to the Southcenter mall. We were driving back to the hotel from downtown. Due to where we were at, we took SR-99. But we (understandably so) missed the turn off for SR-99. Part of the problem is I thought I was looking for an exit for SR-599, and not SR-99 (makes sense, going northbound the exit off I-5 is for SR-599). I never actually noticed that we were on the wrong highway, until the SR-518 exit. Luckily, that exit was signed "SR-508 to I-5, Sea Tac Airport", so it was obvious to me I needed to go that way. It only ended up a small detour in the end, but yeah that area can be confusing. Especially with the similarly named highways 509, 599, and 99.


Another example. US-97 in Bend...oh boy. There's no reason this whole corridor shouldn't be a full 55 MPH complete freeway. Instead, they decided to tack on bike lanes and a side walk that nobody uses, put in RIROs (3 northbound, 6 southbound; previously 2 and 5 respectively)  without proper accel/decel lanes (c'mon ODOT, those would have been easy to throw in!), and a 45 MPH speed limit that nobody follows. On top of that, no direct connection with the eastern half of US-20. Yes, there's not much room for an interchange there, but they should have at least tried. Also, it seems like they ran out of money when they built it, or the city grew too fast around the original plans, something like that. Because north of US-20, there's a very congested retail area with 2 signals. And on the south side, there is a signal at Powers Rd. Credit here though, there used to also be signals at Pinebrook and the south end of 3rd St., those are both gone now.

Similarly, the more recent bypass of downtown Redmond, only bypasses the north half of town, leaving 4 signals still on the highway in Redmond. Vast improvement over the previous configuration, but the area east of the current alignment is sparsely populated, they could have figured something else out.

[Chris19001]

I could list a few pages of just those in my neck of the woods in SE PA thanks to PennDOT.  My local favorite from the recent past has to do with the recent US202 section 700 Parkway project.  The southern end of the project around brought four lanes on 202 to within a quarter mile of the next four lane section (ending just north of Sumneytown Pike). 
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.2106082,-75.2538861,3a,75y,187.24h,66.54t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sWq5opGraYseSGxkxrfgvNg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
Of course there remains a two lane section in between which results in jams every day..  Supposedly there remain plans to complete this portion with a follow-up project, but the amount wasted already to squeeze traffic back into the 2 lanes boggles my mind.  Why put bother putting curbing and drainage in that you'll have to rip out in a few years? Urgh, but that's par for the course around here..

[roadman65]

At Orange Blossom Trail on Taft-Vineland Road in Orlando had Taft Vineland widened to four lanes between OBT and nearby John Young Parkway.  However they did not widen it to four lanes up to OBT, but stopped about 100 feet short.  The road narrows from four to two before the busy OBT/ Taft-Vineland Intersection.  They should have had the road narrow at the intersection proper being its only a stones throw away and now resulting in a new choke point.

[jwolfer]

At Orange Blossom Trail on Taft-Vineland Road in Orlando had Taft Vineland widened to four lanes between OBT and nearby John Young Parkway.  However they did not widen it to four lanes up to OBT, but stopped about 100 feet short.  The road narrows from four to two before the busy OBT/ Taft-Vineland Intersection.  They should have had the road narrow at the intersection proper being its only a stones throw away and now resulting in a new choke point.

Are there plans to widen OBT or reconfigure the intersection?

[bzakharin]

US 206 North widens to a 6-lane divided highway for 2.5 miles approaching the 202/206 (freeway) concurrency and entrance to I-287 only to dump you onto a traffic circle to make any of the above movements. It's worth Southbound where you have to go almost all the way around the circle to access US 206 from 202/206.