I must be misremembering the details then. I read about it in the Wall Street Journal maybe five years ago. There was a plan to eliminate the stoplight (wherever the heck it was) but local businesses were adamantly against it.
I also seem to remember a railroad track crossing I-10 just outside of the Stennis NASA Center in Mississippi. Don’t know if it is still there.
And there was one crossing the Broken Arrow Expressway in Tulsa in the '80’s
At Breezewood, Pa., where I-70 joins up with the Pennsylvania turnpike, there is a break in the highway. You have to exit and then go through a couple of lights to exit from the freeway and enter (embark?, board?, what’s the word I’m looking for) the tollway.
The original justification of the Interstate Highway system was for the purpose of rapid movement of military units. It was proposed and pushed through by Eisenhower based on his experience with the logistic difficulties in moving large vehicles and heavy loads on European roads.
Not that there was anything substandard about European roads. US roads during WWII wouldn’t have done much better, if any. It is just that Eisenhower’s experience was with the mass movement of materiel and personnel on European roads.
A a specification for overpass height, bridge width etc., etc. that allows for the movement of large military loads was put on interstates and these specifications are not necessarily true for US highways.
Who has jurisdiction on the Interstate Highways? Do the local police enforce the traffic laws just on the portion of the highway that passes through their city, or is it usually just the State Police that have the responsibility?
I know that here in Illinois the interstate highways are solely the responsibility of the Illinois State Troopers…and thank god for that! It would be a pain in the a$$ if every single city along the interstate was radaring autos. I’m sure that many cities would use it as a big revenue generator…
It depends on the state law. In Ohio, it is considered very important that the State Highway Patrol is not a state police force. The patrol only has jurisdiction over highway matters – driving and traffic issues. In a crime situation, if the patrol is the first to arrive on the scene, the local sheriff or police must be called in.
I’m pretty sure the local cops can sit radar on the interstate, but they usually don’t, because it’s already covered by the patrol and because sheriff’s departments especially are massively under-staffed as it is.
Sometimes Mr. Frink they are patrolled by local officials. I remember reading in Car and Driver several years ago about a small town outside of Cleveland that did just what you feared. Set up a speed trap on their small section of interstate (it was meassured in yards not miles) and raked in the profits. They were taken to court by a drivers group (RADAR,AAA,etc) and the city lost, IIRC. I know the city of Omaha and the state of Nebraska (and possibly the Douglas County sherrifs) patrol the section of I-80 that runs through Omaha.
dead0man
Me to everyone: Whoops. Yep, I confused the US highway system with state highways. Thanks for the clarification.
The Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate System - See http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/programadmin/interstate.html
History of the US Highway System - See http://www.gbcnet.com/ushighways/history.html
The National Highway System (Both of the above are part of it) - See http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/hep10/nhs/
Highway History - See http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/history.htm
Nope. I’ve made 2 round trips on I-10 from San Antonio to Biloxi this past spring, and I didn’t encounter any RR crossings. US90 does parallel I-10, though, and that has RR crossings.
Robin
Of course, at nearly every toll plaza there are stoplights above the entry areas. They’re used to designate which lanes are open. Hence, I-95 has numerous stoplights.
Thanks for the info. It seems that Ike didn’t “propose the interstate highway system” but rather took advantage of an existing plan and pushed hard for it on the grounds that it was essential to national defense.
My experience has always been, as you would expect, that US highways keep their numbers as they cross state lines, but that state highways change numbers (or cease to be state highways).
Until I moved to New England, that is.
Here, I was confounded to find that highway 28 is continuous from MA highway 28 to NH highway 28. It’s very clear that it’s a state highway in each case, but the numbering is the same.
Anyone familiar with the history of this little bit of road, and why they ended up with the same number?
Some bit of history where they used to be a US highway?
Some joker at one of the states copying the numbering of the other?
A couple of states showing some rare cooperation?
Just curious.
I would guess cooperation. It’s a little unusual, but not all that uncommon. Along the N.H.-Maine border, a lot of routes are continuous (4, 9, and 16, 25, 26 109, 113). Route 25 is continuous across at least 3 states (Maine, N.H., Vermont). It’s not just New England either. I happen to know that Route 97 is continuous in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
And thanks, acsenray. I thought I was going senile there for a while.
Just in case anyone missed the links from Duckster:
“U.S. Highways” are state highways.
As BobT pointed out a long way back, the issue is funding and design.
The “U.S. Highway” system had its origins around 1922 when the states got together and agreed to link up their various (newly paved) roads and–when the road crossed the state line, meeting a similar road in the next state–they would give them the same designation so that truckers, travelers, and mapmakers could follow certain lines of travel across multiple states using a single identity.
The Inter-State Highway system was a Federally funded project to link all sections of the U.S. with a consistent set of limited access highways.
While the Fedral government does provide funds to the states to help with road construction, US-1 is a state highway unless it is sharing concrete and asphalt with I-95. US-20 is a state highway unless it is sharing concrete and asphalt with I-90 or some other I- road.
There have been cases where the states have agreed to retire a number: much of the fabled US-66 has been renamed S.R. 66 (or reverted to local names) because I-55 and I-40 have made the designator redundant. However, the US-66 was always a series of state highways bearing a common name through the states it crossed.
Any road on which any government (Federal, state, municipal, or county) chooses to spend money can be a limited access highway. The Davison Expressway ran across sections of Detroit and Highland Park for years without even a state number on it, simply because Detroit recognized that it needed a way to move thousands of Ford and Chrysler workers across town between the East and West Sides without having them all wait for two hours at the Woodward Ave. traffic light. (And before any youngster jumps on me–I know it is now designated M-8 with funding from the state, but it has not always been so.)
Just to point out, redundancy with an interstate does not necessarily mean that your rank as US-Highway will be demoted. For example, US 61 parallels Interstate 35 through mid-Minnesota as a type of frontage road.
Even though US-Highways are state roads, I’m not sure a state could arbitrarily renumber a current US Highway just because it decided that was a good idea. The whole reason they are any US-Highways today is because of history and because they exist in more than one state with a consistent numbering system.
That said, states are allowed to redirect current US-Highways wherever they choose, I just don’t know if they can summarily execute a US Highway number without federal approval.
I believe at some point US 99 in California was phased out. Interstate 5 took over most of the traffic and California 99 was also a principal highway between Southern California and the Central Valley.
Here is a good site about it.
Going back to the OP, I would say that there are several differences. Age, for one, the U.S. Highway system being much older. Also, the modern Interstate system incorporates a fairly high degree of standardization that the older system lacks, primarily because the U.S. system just sorta grew from what the various states had in place, whereas the modern Interstates were designed with very specific criteria in mind.
A few points I hope are pertinent…
I refer to today’s Interstates as the ‘modern Interstate system’ because prior to the 1950’s, what we now call ‘U.S Highways’ were commonly referred to as ‘U.S. Interstate Highways,’ there being nothing else at the time with that designation.
Many of the design criteria incorporated into the modern Interstate system stemmed from military requirements. For example, the system-wide minimum overhead clearance corresponded to the height of a missile transport, NOT commercial trucks as is widely believed. In fact, the enabling legislation was titled, “The Interstate Defense Highway Act.” This was our federal government’s clever way of circumventing the fact that it cannot legally engage in the business of building highways within the framework of the U.S. Constitution. By including military-style design criteria, the money could be confiscated and spent under the guise of providing for the ‘common defence,’ which the feds are empowered to do. This back-door approach has been used by the federal government to weasel its way into a great many arenas where the Constitution clearly states that it does not belong. Another excellent example is the system of waterway improvements built by the Army Corps of Engineers and administered by the Corps and the Bureau of Reclamation. By citing constitutional provisions regarding the ‘common defence’ and interstate commerce, the U.S. government was able to confiscate and spend our money on dams and locks and develop a virtual stranglehold on the waterways of America. Other examples of this brand of treachery include the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Bonneville Power Administration.
The toll roads or turnpikes some posters have mentioned don’t necessarily fit any mold. The Ohio Turnpike, f’rinstance, was built and is still administered and maintained by the Ohio Turnpike Commission, mainly through the collection of some pretty hefty tolls. It carries the designations I-80 and I-90, but that came about only in exchange for some time at the federal feed-trough. The Ohio Turnpike Commission still operates as an independent entity and will, in fact, suffer no interference whatsoever from ODOT, the state agency in charge of every other piece of highway in the state. To its credit, however, the Commission presides over a highway that is widely considered to be the best-maintained Interstate in Ohio.
As for funding, practically every piece of highway built today is funded in part by money confiscated and redistributed by the federal government. The fed money may come in the form of block grants or revenue sharing or some other euphemism, rather than as direct funding, but it’s there.
Yeah, decomissioning has gone on… 99 and 66 being the two most famous decomissioned highways. That was more than 30 years ago, from what I’ve read. Does anybody know of a more recent US Highway decommissioning? What’s the process whereby a US highway is decommisioned?
In St. Louis County (MO) the village of Charlack runs RADAR on a stretch of I-170 that runs through their town. There are no exits or entrances in their town and the stretch of I-170 is only about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile in lenght, but they are usually there when I go by on a Saturday morning. They usually don’t catch locals though. Courts have ruled that if it runs through their town, they can run RADAR and collect fines.