Rural Freeways That Need Six Lanes

[SSOWorld]

What advantage does one receive traversing a six-laned highway versus a four-laned highway?  Seems to me that the more capacity, the more traffic.

None when trucks use the third lane. (not every state bans trucks in the fast lanes)

[Plutonic Panda]

I wish Oklahoma would restrict trucks from using the left lane if there's three or more lanes.

[webny99]

What advantage does one receive traversing a six-laned highway versus a four-laned highway?  Seems to me that the more capacity, the more traffic.

None when trucks use the third lane. (not every state bans trucks in the fast lanes)

Even with occasional trucks in the left lane, six lanes still provides greater flexibility than four.

[SSOWorld]

What needs to go are truck speed limits.

[Plutonic Panda]

What needs to go are truck speed limits.

I disagree. I think trucks should be able to go as fast as they want if a trucker wants to go 110 miles an hour let them have a state police deal with it because when you limit the truck, it doesn't make sense.

Are you just gonna mandate every single road in the country to a certain limit? So if you have a row, that's perfectly fine for cars to go 60 miles an hour but for trucks it would be better off for them going 55 mph. That's gonna create a big problem.

[TheCatalyst31]

What needs to go are truck speed limits.

While there are a few states that have unusually low truck speed limits (California's 55 maximum is the bane of my ATS runs), a lot of that comes down to trucking companies and their insurers governing or otherwise mandating lower speeds for their trucks. It's a legitimate concern, too, since trucks are so much heavier and can do a lot more damage at high speed if they hit a car. Unfortunately, those speeds aren't very consistent and truckers are also under financial pressure to go as fast as their trucks let them, so you get a lot of trucks passing other trucks and holding up the rest of the interstate.

[ran4sh]

truckers are also under financial pressure to go as fast as their trucks let them, so you get a lot of trucks passing other trucks and holding up the rest of the interstate.

This would be the reason *why* something needs to be done about insurance regulating truck speeds. If micropassing is eliminated then that would actually make the roads safer even if some trucks get to go faster.

[DJStephens]

There would be enough national federal aid funding to do up to 20 routes in the next 10 years. Funding mechanisms beyond what currently exist would be developed for this.

Is that 10 years from conceiving the project to construction completion or to construction starting, with another 10 to finish construction?  Either way feels very aggressive (just look at the controversy surrounding widening NY 17), but the former seems downright impossible.

It would put it back on par with the original Interstate Highway System.  Many of the corridors were rolled out within 10 years or so.  Not 30 or 40 years.   This time we are not talking about new highways -- but the widening of existing.

The parts of the original interstates that were built that quickly were the easiest, in several different ways.  High need, right of way publicly owned, often needing nothing but adding two lanes of roadway for the opposite direction or at times needing just taking down US signs and putting up Interstate signs.  Public debate was much more limited.

The Feds wanted to show progress.  Therefore they started both rural "greenfield" and pre-existing rural Federal route overlays first.   Likely more lane-miles were opened, in the Johnson Administration (11/63 - 1/69) than any other.   In hind-sight, would have started the more difficult urban segments first, but then, they wouldn't have had their "lane mile" progress.  Maybe they had board room discussions about this topic, back then.