Odd Facts About Early Interstates/Freeways...

[thenetwork]

I was looking over some old aerial photos at historicalaerials.com and came across some photos of some freeways in my old stomping ground and saw some interesting configurations that do not exist anymore.  Some were posted in the Closed Exits thread, but my one discovery merits a new thread.

When the Western end of the Eastern Section of I-80S/I-76 was constructed in the late 50s, there was a segment of the freeway between Seville (SR-3) and Wadsworth (SR-57) that looks like it was first a limited-access 2-lane highway.  Not quite a Super-2 since there were at-grade crossings.  They even built the Rest Area which would later serve only the Eastbound lanes of I-76 (I-80S) & US-224.  (They added a westbound Rest Area when it was finally converted to a full freeway in the 60s, but now both are long gone).   The aerial photo in which I spotted this was from 1959, with the 1960 topographic map also showing the configuration.

This would make sense for one of the last original generation signs on I-71 for the I-76/US-224 Lodi Akron exit (removed in the late 90's), for at one time the sign only carried a US-224 shield on it.  That stretch of road was likely signed only as US-224 and not I-80S until it was made into a full freeway.

What doesn't make sense is why the short stretch (< 5 miles) of 2-lane when it was divided 4 lane freeway on the rest of the stretch from I-71 to Akron when they knew this was to be a future freeway??

Anyhoo, are there other interesting configurations of freeways or freeways-to-be like the US-224/I-80S example?

[briantroutman]

I've long wondered the same about the incomplete section of the US 220 Susquehanna Beltway near Mackeyville, PA.

To my knowledge, the entire 80-to-80 loop had always been planned as a freeway (it's listed as Corridor P on the 1966 ARC map), yet for some reason, even though this section was constructed on an entirely new alignment (this PennPilot aerial photo from 1968 shows its right of way being cleared in tandem with the adjacent construction of I-80), it was built as a two-lane facility on a two-lane ROW with a simple diamond interchange at I-80 and an at-grade intersection at Fairground Road.

Only now, nearly 50 years later, is the at-grade intersection being replaced with an interchange, although I don't know whether the through lanes will be constructed or even graded as a two- or four-lane facility, and so far as I've seen, there are no current plans to build out the missing carriageway through the remainder of this section or reconfigure the interchange to a continuous type.



I've also wondered about the various phases of the roads leading into the Eisenhower Interchange in Harrisburg. What today forms the zig-zag of I-83 around the southern and eastern edges of Harrisburg is what had separately been the unnumbered Harrisburg Expressway running east-west and the BYP US 230 expressway running north-south. On Historic Aerials photos up through 1968, the two roads simply met at an at-grade intersection. Between 1968 and 1970, PennDOT's solution was to build what essentially is a partial cloverleaf connecting the two existing surface streets, then a separate directional interchange at a higher level that connected those existing freeways to the new US 322 and I-283 freeways that had just been built.

Assuming that the then-PDH could see even ten years into the future, I don't understand why that interchange was built in such a piecemeal and haphazard fashion.

[capt.ron]

In Barstow when 4 lane US 66 terminated just southwest of town (pre late 1960's), it looked like a funky s-shaped piece. Upon looking at Google Earth, the "s shaped" road was done away with around year 2000, or maybe earlier. Now, 2 lane "L street" serves connecting I-15 with the old 2 lane 66 alignment that went southwest towards Helendale, and so on.