US-78... poof! Gone? (Google jumping the gun again)

[jOnstar]

     I was looking on google tonight, and came across the area where google has been putting interstates up where they are not signed yet (I-69 in some of KY, & TN) and I noticed something that I don't even think has been talked about yet. Google really jumped the gun this time and decommisioned US-78 from the map. Not just the soon to be I-22 section between Memphis and Birmingham... but the whole highway itself.

     I like to see where the future routes are going to be, but killing a highway before it's even talked about (or at least from what I know) seems too much to me. I think it would be kind of cool if google can put future highways and construction on another layer that you could turn on and off like traffic and stay current with what is going on now. Just a suggestion anyway.

[WashuOtaku]

It could be also Google being Google.  I sometimes don't see certain highways in the Carolinas like US 52 and some NC ones; Google does weird things sometimes.

[Charles2]

Truth is, once the I-22/I-65 interchange is completed, U.S. 78 will be totally redundant between Birmingham and the Mississippi-Tennessee border at Memphis.  Several years ago ALDot changed the milepost markers on the U.S. 78/AL-5 concurrency between Birmingham and Jasper to reflect AL-5 mileage rather than U.S. 78 mileage.  And aside from the four-lane connecting Birmingham and Jasper, most of the "old" U.S. 78 in both Alabama and Mississippi is a substandard route that serves mainly to connect small towns (Tupelo and maybe New Albany being the exceptions to the "small town" standard).

While I've never been a fan of truncating or eliminating U.S. routes that have been replaced by paralleling interstate highways, the argument could be made for decommissioning U.S. 11, 31, 78 and 90 in Alabama.  All of these routes have long since lost their usefulness as major through routes, although they all have sections that are darned scenic.  Of the U.S. routes in Alabama that have interstate partners, the only ones that really need to be maintained are U.S. 29 (at least from the Alabama-Florida state line to either Tuskeegee or Auburn) and U.S. 80.