I don't understand why Mississippi keeps adding new interstates they know they can't afford to maintain and can barely justify to exist in the first place.
Same reason Arkansas keeps building new highways?
I see no reason for this highway to exist in MS at all.
Outside of I 269 from I-55 to I-22, I agree with you. That segment should be built and called I-22, because it connects Birmingham, Atlanta, and the southeast with Memphis. As for I-269 from the I-22 junction to the north through I-40, I would call that a complete waste of money.
The sole
raison d'etre for I-269 is funding connected to the overall I-69/HPC #18 corridor. TN at least had the good sense to insist that it be routed over TN 385, a planned and/or existing freeway facility, so their initial out-of-pocket expenses would be simply for that I-269 portion between the state line and TN 385. The I-269 "brief" was as an outer Memphis bypass eventually connecting to the parent I-69 at both ends. MS was eager to develop this particular corridor since the region anchored by Storm Lake, Hernando, and Olive Branch, due to both housing and commercial "spillover" from Memphis, is one of the fastest growing exurban areas in the South and needed a freeway corridor to tie the disparate parts of the region together. And once the I-55-to-Tunica section of parent I-69, while primarily initiated to expedite traffic to the gaming facilities along the river, was built a dozen years ago, finishing up the I-269 loop as an extension of that initial segment was inevitable. And now that the I-269 corridor in
both states has become the focal point of regional commercial development, the entire concept is, to coin a phrase, "retroactively justified". Regardless of the initially proffered reasons for deploying the I-269 corridor to begin with, it is and always will be a means to an end -- the economic development of the Memphis-area periphery.