Best EW interstate through the great plains

[Ketchup99]

This is a personal favorite 35 mph back road.

Did they recently lower the speed limit?  In GSV, I don't see anything lower than 40 or 45 in either direction.

It used to be higher but my town has been dropping every limit they possibly can. It's now part 35, part 45. The part I showed is, I'm pretty sure, now 35.

I see you're from a town with a major university.  Here's the thing -- a significant percentage of those, particularly state universities, have an urban planning program (regardless of where they're located); "exclusionary" urbanism tends to dominate those programs, including the invariable anti-car attitude.  And more often than not those folks gain internships in the local planning agencies as part of their curriculum -- and a few tend to get hired right there upon graduation (cf. City of Portland [OR] and PDX Metro vis-a-vis the PSU urban planning department).  At that point, the "garbage can" method of policy formulation -- predetermined solutions looking for a place and/or situation where they may be applied -- is instituted.  And one of the easiest places to do that is with in-town speed limits -- lowering them as a general principle to (a) attempt to enhance safety of non-automotive street occupants as well as (b) increase the perception of city driving as being more of a PITA than it's worth.  The former is actually a worthy goal, but the latter is less salient; those who need to traverse the city to engage in business or social activity will generally just suck it up and put up with the fact it takes 10 minutes more to get where they're going, but overall they're just a wee bit more pissed off than they were before.  It won't drive anyone who requires an automobile any more than sporadically to switch to a transit mode -- particularly in locales with less-than-comprehensive/exemplary systems.  But speed limits are low-hanging fruit to planners -- it's easy to inundate city councils with stats and generally convince those not intrinsically opposed to such to accede to these measures.  Thus in recent years the movement to kick street speed limits into low gear has gained traction as planning departments assume this particular "one-size-fits-all" approach to such matters.

Don't worry, I'm painfully aware of all that...
The speed limit drops don't deter anyone from using these roads, and in fact nobody even pays them any mind. A major, five-lane street running through downtown - Atherton Street, US-322's old alignment - was reduced to 25 not only downtown but well beyond it. Nobody cares and the prevailing speed, which was 40 before, is still 40. We actually have a decent public transit network if you're trying to get to the Penn State campus, but if you aren't, it's hopeless. Our city council (or technically borough council for no good reason at all) did not require any statistics to go on their speed limit reduction bend and happily turned as many 35s into 25s and 45s into 35s as they possibly could. Maybe this is what happens when you have six retirees and one non-retiree on the Council.

Perhaps this is all better for another thread... back to the topic, best interstate through the Plains?

[TEG24601]

Between 2003 and 2009, I drove from Seattle/Portland to Flint/Detroit and back 26 times, and growing up did similar trips a further 10 times.


In the winter I preferred I-80/84 for the journey, as I felt the roadway was more consistently open, less weather, fewer high mountain passes.
I typically look I-90/94 as it was a shorter route than pure I-90 or I-80/84, and the drive across Eastern Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota always seemed to eek out the best MPG on my Taurus (36 MPG), likely due to winds and geography.
I-90 seems to be the most scenic, but only took it a few times, as the N/S drop to Wyoming felt like a waste of time.
I never took I-70 as an Adult, but do remember taking I-70 during our first family cross-country trip driving from San Diego to Indy.  It seemed decent enough, but honestly the only thing I remember once we left Ouray, CO was Fudruckers near Kansas City.


I'm login to have to give my vote to I-94

[sparker]

Between 2003 and 2009, I drove from Seattle/Portland to Flint/Detroit and back 26 times, and growing up did similar trips a further 10 times.


In the winter I preferred I-80/84 for the journey, as I felt the roadway was more consistently open, less weather, fewer high mountain passes.
I typically look I-90/94 as it was a shorter route than pure I-90 or I-80/84, and the drive across Eastern Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota always seemed to eek out the best MPG on my Taurus (36 MPG), likely due to winds and geography.
I-90 seems to be the most scenic, but only took it a few times, as the N/S drop to Wyoming felt like a waste of time.
I never took I-70 as an Adult, but do remember taking I-70 during our first family cross-country trip driving from San Diego to Indy.  It seemed decent enough, but honestly the only thing I remember once we left Ouray, CO was Fudruckers near Kansas City.


I'm login to have to give my vote to I-94

Re the choice of 84/80 vs. 90 or 90/94 as a winter choice:  94 (particularly) and 90 generally have a better chance of being closed across the plains than does 80 across NE -- but the wind situation (unless there's a storm front coming down from Canada) across Wyoming mitigates against that route (also subject to closures as well).  And as regards the considerable N-S "drops" or "humps" experienced between Billings, MT and Buffalo, WY on I-90, it's matched by the I-84 section multiplexed with I-15 in northern Utah.  And I-94, which followed old US 10 which in turn followed the old Northern Pacific rail line, the first to attack the Northwest, has than northern "hump" through Glendive, MT eventually followed by a return SE between Fargo and Minneapolis to access the Twin Cities -- by no means the most direct route (which, arguably, would be by default US 12 -- although it really doesn't serve much of a population base between its segmental end points of Miles City, MT and Minneapolis -- probably why it wasn't considered for inclusion in the Interstate system).  The basic fact is that all the Interstate corridors across the northern half of the country are in some respect indirect due to a combination of topology and population distribution. 

And I appreciate the fact that there's still a few Fuddruckers out there (we're down to two, rather distantly spaced, here in the greater Bay area).  Great burgers (even semi-great wedge fries!).