If the west controlled the east

[roadman65]

I was often wondering what the fate of US 1, US 11, US 41 etc. would be if the east truncated or decommissioned all the US routes overshadowed by the interstates.  I believe that US 1 would be truncated to Jacksonville to avoid being paired with I-95, and the section through the Keys would become FL 5, FDOT's secret route number.  Just as US 61 is now state route 61 north of Duluth, sort of.  Rather than a long useless concurrency over I-95 it would not be worth to have a US highway go all the way to Key West.

I also believe there would be no US 46 in New Jersey and US 130 would be gone as well in the Garden State.  Perhaps US 3, US 5, and US 9 would be gone, as they are no longer principle routes they once were due to the interstate system.  US 7 would have its northern terminus in Burlington to avoid an I-89 overlap or corridor shadow, and US 9 might only exist between NYC and Albany due to it being several miles from I-87 at that point.

What highways would you think would go or be rerouted. What highways would you think out of all should the east coast thinking have saved that the west would eliminate that you like or even think that should stay anyway? What is your picture of what the eastern US routes would be if interstate following highways would be if all those that eliminate controlled the states east of the Mississippi excluding Michigan?

[NE2]

You mean if the east was sparsely populated like much of the west. Nebraska has no problem keeping US 30 separate.

[peterj920]

US 90 seems to be very close to interstates between Jacksonville and Houston, with the exception of the stretch between Lafeyette and New Orleans.  US 51 also seems to hug I-55 from Memphis to it's southern end, while I-39 was applied to a big part of Illinois and Wisconsin.  Since North Dakota probably did not want to decommission US 52, Minnesota just decided not to sign it west of St. Paul, and North Dakota doesn't sign it along I-94 either.  I think a lot of the eastern states retain the US routes because they carry a lot of local traffic.  In Wisconsin, US 41 was rerouted many years ago, and the old road was redesignated as WIS 175 between Milwaukee and Fond Du Lac, so the state must have felt that the old road carried enough local traffic to maintain as a state highway.  Illinois also felt the need to keep the old route of US 51 around and designated it IL 251.  Even when US routes are relocated, states sometimes feel a need to maintain the older route.  They're both interstates now, but US 41 was relocated to its current route many years before the interstate designation, and US 51 was built as a freeway between Rockford and I-80 before I-39 was designated as an interstate.  Illinois probably did not want to confuse people by having half of US 51 on a freeway and the other half on the old stretch south of I-80.

[Henry]

For example, I think there would be no US 21 south of Columbia, as that's where I-77 ends. But seeing that single-state US highways can't be less than 300 miles long, my best bet would be to reroute it up what are parts of US 221, 321 and 421. Many US routes that don't follow Interstates are safe, which means that US 95, US 26 and such continue to exist, although they may be shorter than they preciously were.

[Chris19001]

US-13 would be a goner north of Wilmington..