Highway Blunders

[Voyager]

Post your blunders, if they're overcrowded freeways or underused ones, or if they've had anything bad happen to them. For example, this one:

[Alex]

Do you know how many overcrowded freeways there are in the country? Each day more new drivers come to the fold too, so you can pretty much say just about every freeway in every metro area that is not losing population is overcrowded... 

[Voyager]

Then there will be plenty of posts! 

Can't think of any totally underused highways that basically serve no purpose?

[agentsteel53]

I-70 in Utah definitely does not need to be more than two lanes.

[Michael]

Interstate 81 in Syracuse, NY.  The bridges are getting near the end of their lifespan.  See a thread about this here.

[Alex]

Well I could vote for the interchange between the 60, 91, 215, being a full-cloverleaf interchange, but they are remedying that now somewhat (already added a flyover).

[agentsteel53]

the way 60/91/215 is numbered is also pretty much a blunder.  I can never remember which two multiplex (60 and 215 I think??) and I know that going on 215 northbound, if one is not careful - wham, instant 91!

[Revive 755]

The Poplar Street Bridge in downtown St. Louis, for a number of reasons:

1) Seeing how many freeways to cram onto one bridge.  It would have been even worse if the freeways for IL 3 (down to I-255) and IL 15 were built.

2) The 20 mph, single lane ramps on the Missouri end.  It seems almost guaranteed to find traffic backing up on the I-55 ramps.  Yet a new bridge is being built without access to/from I-55 . . .

3) Lack of alternatives for traffic coming from/going to I-55 and I-44 in Missouri.  I-70 drivers have easy access to the MLK Bridge.  For I-55 and I-44 the only options are to loop around on I-270/I-255 or sit through many stoplights trying to access the MLK and Eads Bridges.

4) There's almost always construction somewhere on that bridge or one of the approach ramps.  Given the additional delays, it seems they could have broken even on a replacement bridge by now.

Now some additional St. Louis blunders:

* Placing I-44 way too close to US 40. 

* No access to US 40 from I-55 and vice versa.  This kind of makes I-44 more useful.

* An overloaded I-270 between I-44 and US 40, yet all the alternatives keep getting shot down.  Light rail doesn't help if one is passing through the area - Hannibal or Kansas City to Sikeston - so it is not an alternative despite what some might say.  Really need another freeway loop farther out.

[us44mt]

Finally, after 40 or so years, someone came up with the idea that I 84 and I 87 at Newburgh, NY should be directly connected. What a brilliant idea, connecting 2 interstates!

[agentsteel53]

after 55 years, the Penna Turnpike (I-276) is not connected to I-95.

interestingly, Google Maps signs I-95 as going down I-276 into New Jersey and connecting to the NJ Turnpike at 276's eastern end, as though it magically jumped down a level at the 95/276 junction.

even more interestingly, it signs it as continuing northward.  Yep, two I-95s.  And not even the courtesy of an I-95E and I-95W split.  Instead, it magically becomes I-295, which heads south ... to I-195, which finally connects with the other I-95 after a horrible detour.

yep, I-95 in the south NJ and Philly area ... a colossal highway blunder! 

[John]

To be fair, that mess only happened because typical NIMBY crap. At least they are fixing the numbering, although actually building a freeway couldn't hurt anything (Trenton and vicinity is a big ghetto anyway, maybe a new freeway would bring economic development.)

[agentsteel53]

big NIMBY crap prevented a simple 276/95 interchange?

[US71]

How about a washout?

[Voyager]

Everyone be nice now. :-)

Talking about washouts, 101 in Cotati recently fell off the side of the hill, and the section near Ukiah has been constantly rebuilt for 10 or more years. Also, what about the bridge in CT that collapsed? Where was that?

[Duke87]

what about the bridge in CT that collapsed? Where was that?

Greenwich. I-95 over the Mianus River. That happened because stupid maintenance crews paved over the storm drains on the bridge, causing rainwater to instead be forced to trickle its way down through the structure and rust the heck out of everything. There was no real flaw with the design of the bridge.

[Alex]

To be fair, that mess only happened because typical NIMBY crap. At least they are fixing the numbering, although actually building a freeway couldn't hurt anything (Trenton and vicinity is a big ghetto anyway, maybe a new freeway would bring economic development.)

I've been taking the U.S. 206 corridor since 1995. Each year I take it, there is more sprawl along the route and more traffic lights. For an area that was anti-Interstate 95, they have not been anti-development.

The monumental back-ups that occur periodically on the NJ Turnpike are partially the result of Interstate 95's demise because all of that traffic between New York to Philadelphia is relegated to one limited-access route.  There have been upgrades to U.S. 1 over the years, but the route still retains several traffic lights and side access points. Thus the Turnpike remains the defacto route for through travelers.

[Scott5114]

Breezewood. Just...Breezewood.

[rawr apples]

Haha I love breezewood. So many time have I driven through that town, I hope it always stays like that.

[Alex]

Breezewood is a joke, I've only driven the surface-routing of Interstate 70 once, and that was enough...

[Scott5114]

I-70 south of Breezewood is a joke too!

[rawr apples]

whats wrong with it south of?

[Scott5114]

Very substandard, with some exit ramps bearing 15 MPH advisory speeds, as well as signs old enough to drink (many of them predate shields!). Of course if you look at it a different way, having ancient signs isn't a bad thing...

[Ubeans2001]

I personally think old signs are pretty cool. Like in California, the interstate 15 was built in the 60s-70s and some signs are still the originals! I have a home movie from 1989 and clearly an old dark green button copy sign reading "Baker  11, Las Vegas  103" was still there when I went to los angeles last summer and surprisingly my research showed the signs dated back from 1969-1972. A piece of history lays before my eyes, but sadly the CalTrans is starting to replace most of them with new retroreflective signs. It would be awesome. If I could get them to sell me that sight when they decide to replace it with a newer one. Just think, it was there for more than 30 years, through rain, heat waves, snow, and lonely cloudy thunderstormy days with no car in sight for miles... Creepy 0.0 - same goes for the Mohave Phone Booth (look it up if you don't know what that is. It's a pretty creepy story just because it was a phone booth in tv middle of the desert).

[Scott5114]

Yeah, I remember reading about it. Lots of weird stuff goes on in the desert. Random phone booths, people transmitting radio stations that merely broadcast strings of numbers...

Oh, to get back on topic...Man, the Skelly Drive (I-44) in Tulsa is a big pain in the ass. If you have the change to spare, take the Creek Turnpike and bypass Tulsa! Did somebody say `substandard`?

[algorerhythms]

How about a washout?

Heh. Once when I was driving down US 219 south of Somerset, PA, I went around a corner and saw a scene like that. Apparently the sinkhole had just happened shortly before I got there, so I consider myself lucky that I wasn't a little bit faster.