There’s a road in town that has several numerical designations: I-516, US17, US80, SR25, and SR21 (SR=state road). My question: what’s the deal? I know that some highways will have “regular names” like “Main Street” and so forth. So how can one road have so many different numbers? Is it a funding thing?
BTW, I know about HOW highways and interstates are numbered.
Look at the section of the road in question as an intersection of sorts. Each of the number designations is a road with a begining and an end but they all cross/share the same section of road at that point.
In my area we have such a road, US 95 and Hwy 2. Each is a different road which shares the same road for quite a stretch, more than 100 miles in this case before they diverge again.
The numbers apply to the routes, not the pavement. The routes are a more conceptual phenomenon. How to get from point A to point B. The roadbed is a physical thing, not necessarily identical with the route (even though without the roadbed there would be no route). Sometimes more than one route can share the same section of roadbed before they diverge.
What messes me up is in the city when a street name veers off unexpectedly; you stay on the same street but suddenly it has a different name, and the street name you wanted to be on is away someplace else. I hate it when they do that.
You must live around Sandpoint, Idaho, as I recognized the route numbers from that area. Just outside of Boise (where I live) I-84 is shared with U.S. routes 20, 26 and 30. Does anyone know of a place where more than four route numbers share the same highway? (sorry for the mini-hijack).
dwc, I was recently on a road trip with my wife.
When we do this, it is backroads all the way so we end up in some weird places. We came to a place where there were six or seven route numbers all assigned to the same section of asphalt.
I don’t remember where it was (I want to say Arkansas), but we did take a picture. I’ll see if I can track it down (but we came home with almost a 400 pictures from that trip so my luck may not be good).
When two interstates are concurrent, what’s the deciding factor in which interstate gets the mileposts?
For example, around the Burlington, NC area, I-40 and I-85 are concurrent for quite a stretch. The mileposts along this stretch coincide with what the mileposts should be for I-85, but not I-40 (if you’re driving I-40, the mileposts at one point jump from about 260 all the way down to about 160). Why I-85 instead of I-40? My guess is that it’s entirely decided that whichever interstate was there first gets the mileposts, but I don’t know this for a fact.