Everything about United States Numbered Highways totally explained
The system of
United States Numbered Highways (often called
U.S. Routes or
U.S. Highways) is an integrated system of
roads and
highways in the
United States numbered within a nationwide grid. As these highways were coordinated among the states, they're infrequently referred to as
Federal Highways, but they've always been maintained by
state or
local governments since their initial designation in 1926. There has never been any
de jure federal funding difference between these routes and any other
state highways. The numbers and locations are coordinated by the
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), in which the only federal involvement is a non-voting seat for the
United States Department of Transportation.
The
Interstate Highway System has largely replaced the U.S. Highways for through traffic, though many important regional connections are still made by U.S. Highways, and new routes are still being added.
The very similar
Trans-Canada Highway is often considered the Canadian counterpart to the U.S. Highway System, although it's much more limited in scope.
System details
In general, U.S. Highways don't have a minimum
design standard, unlike the later
Interstate Highways, and are not usually built to
freeway standards, although some stretches of U.S. Highways do meet those standards. Many are the main streets of the cities and towns through which they run. However, new additions to the system must "substantially meet the current
AASHTO design standards".
Except for
toll bridges and
tunnels, very few U.S. Highways are
toll roads. AASHTO policy says that a toll road may only be included as a
bannered route, and that "a toll-free routing between the same termini shall continue to be retained and marked as a part of the U.S. Numbered System." However, none of the four toll roads in the system follow this:
Numbering
The two-digit U.S. Routes follow a simple grid, in which odd-numbered routes run generally north to south and even-numbered routes run generally east to west. (
U.S. Route 101 is considered two-digit, with first digit ten.) Numbers generally increase from 1 in the east to 101 in the west and 2 in the north to 98 in the south. Numbers ending in zero or one (and
U.S. Route 2), and to a lesser extent in five, were considered main routes in the early numbering, but extensions and truncations have made this distinction largely meaningless; for instance,
U.S. Route 6 was until 1964 the longest route (that distinction now belongs to
U.S. Route 20). The
Interstate System grid, which increases from west to east and south to north, is intentionally opposite from the U.S. grid, to keep identically numbered routes apart and keeping them from being confused. (which is why there are no Interstates 50 or 60), the initial Interstate numbering approved in 1958 violated this with
Interstate 24 and
U.S. Route 24 in
Illinois and
Interstate 40,
Interstate 80,
U.S. Route 40 and
U.S. Route 80 in
California. (US 40 and US 80 were removed from California in its
1964 renumbering.) Some recent and proposed Interstates, some of them out-of-place in the grid, also violate this:
Interstate 41 and
U.S. Route 41 in
Wisconsin (which will run
concurrently),
Interstate 49 and
U.S. Route 49 in
Arkansas,
Interstate 69 and
U.S. Route 69 in
Texas, and
Interstate 74 and
U.S. Route 74 in
North Carolina (which will run concurrently).
Divided and bannered routes
Divided routes have been around since 1926, and designate roughly-equivalent splits of routes. For instance,
U.S. Route 11 splits into
U.S. Route 11E (east) and
U.S. Route 11W (west) in
Knoxville, Tennessee, and the routes rejoin in
Bristol, Virginia. Occasionally only one of the two routes is suffixed;
U.S. Route 6N in
Pennsylvania doesn't rejoin
U.S. Route 6 at its west end. AASHTO has been trying to eliminate these since 1934; its current policy is to deny approval of new ones and to eliminate existing ones "as rapidly as the State Highway Department and the Standing Committee on Highways can reach agreement with reference thereto".
Bannered routes—those with a banner such as
alternate or
bypass—are also managed by AASHTO. These are sometimes designated with lettered suffixes, like A for alternate or B for business.
Naming
The official route log, last published by AASHTO in 1989, has been named United States Numbered Highways since its initial publication in 1926. In the log, "U.S. Route" is used in the table of contents, while "United States Highway" appears as the heading for each route. All reports of the Special Committee on Route Numbering, at least since 1989, use "U.S. Route", and federal laws relating to highways use "United States Route" or "U.S. Route" more often than the "Highway" variants. The use of U.S. Route or U.S. Highway on a local level depends on the state.
History
Early auto trails
In the early 1910s,
auto trail organizations - most prominently the
Lincoln Highway - began to spring up, marking and promoting routes for long-distance automobile travel. While many of these organizations worked with towns and states along the route to improve the roadways, others simply chose a route based on towns that were willing to pay dues, put up signs, and did little else.
Preliminary planning: the formation of the 1925 report
Wisconsin was the first state in the U.S. to number
its highways, erecting signs in May 1918. Other states soon followed, and the
New England states got together in 1922 to establish the six-state
New England Interstate Routes.
Behind the scenes, the
federal aid program had begun with the passage of the
Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1916, providing 50% monetary support from the
federal government for improvement of major roads. The
Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1921 limited the routes to 7% of each state's roads, while 3/7 had to be "interstate in character". Identification of these main roads was completed in 1923.
These major transcontinental routes, along with the
auto trails they roughly replaced, were as follows: Major numbering changes had been made in Pennsylvania by the publishing of the first route log in April 1927, in order to align the routes to the auto trails, and
U.S. Route 15 had been extended across
Virginia. Further modifications and additions were made in the next few years.
Criticism by the press
Much of the early criticism of the U.S. Highway system focused on the choice of numbers to designate the highways, rather than names. Some saw a numbered highway system as cold and heartless compared to the more colorful names of the auto trail systems. The
New York Times wrote "The traveler may shed tears as he drives the
Lincoln Highway or dream dreams as he speeds over the
Jefferson Highway, but how can he get a 'kick' out of 46, 55 or 33 or 21?"
Ernest McGaffey was quoted as saying, "Logarithms will take the place of legends, and 'hokum' for history."
General expansion and the occasional elimination continued to occur through the years. One of the more interesting cases was the proposed extension of
U.S. Route 97 to
Alaska along the
Alaska Highway, cancelled because the
Yukon Territory refused to renumber its section as 97. For the most part, the U.S. Highways remained the primary method of intercity travel; the main exceptions were
toll roads such as the
Pennsylvania Turnpike and
parkways such as the
Merritt Parkway. Many of the first high-speed roads were U.S. Highways: the
Gulf Freeway carried
U.S. Route 75, the
Pasadena Freeway carried
U.S. Route 66, and the
Pulaski Skyway carried
U.S. Route 1 and
U.S. Route 9.
Post-Interstate era
The
Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 appropriated funding for the
Interstate Highway System, a vast network of
freeways across the country. By 1957, AASHTO had decided to assign a new grid - opposing the U.S. Highway grid - to the new routes. Though the Interstate numbers were to supplement, rather than replace, the U.S. Highway numbers, in many cases (especially in the
West) they were routed along the new Interstates as there was no need for the states to maintain two parallel routes through sparsely populated territory. Major decommissioning began with
California's
1964 renumbering, and the 1985 removal of
U.S. Route 66 is often seen as the end of an era.
The last remaining segment of unpaved U.S. Highway was
U.S. Route 183 between
Rose and
Taylor, Nebraska,
paved ca.
1967.
AASHTO has recognized that
state highways are now symbols of good roads as the U.S. Routes once were. Thus it has acted to rationalize the system by eliminating all single-state routes less than 300 miles (480 km) in length "as rapidly as the State Highway Department and the Standing Committee on Highways of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials can reach agreement with reference thereto". New additions to the system must serve more than one state and "substantially meet the current
AASHTO design standards".
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