Road Types (USA) – comprehensive overhaul of drivable roads

[Daknife]

Something has changed. As I said, my previous test route is no longer working.

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[Daknife]

Okay, But now we have Champs putting out conflicting information. Some champs are saying it must be a MH to route really long distances, when it hasn't been a requirement before. And you state how I thought, that no such change had been made.

All I know for certain is that a year ago and a couple times since then, I used a route from Richfield UT to Flagstaff AZ to test US-89 when the landslide broke it. First to ensure the scenic alt worked, then that the New 89T worked. Yesterday based on what I was seeing in this thread, I tried my test route again. Flagstaff found very long routes using mostly freeways, so I shortened it to Page, There it errored out. So I shortened to Kanab UT A distance of 144 miles. Live map gave via 89 as the primary route with alternates going I-70 to I-15 to Cedar City UT, then over to 89 to the end, and the third was freeway down to Vegas, over to 89 and up the 89 Scenic, to Kanab. So I traced the 79 miles of road from Kanab to Page and verified nothing broken. So has it always had a 200 mile limit, and somehow worked fine before, or what?

[Daknife]

To bring back a somewhat dated point, simply to prove we can always find an exception in this wacky world.

If you're suggesting to me that the AASHTO/Congress/US DOT keeps routes around for their historical significance alone, …

But they do in fact do so. I live a few blocks away from a seemingly quiet side street, mostly residential except at one end where it connects to a major arterial surface street. It doesn't look like anything but a residential street, except for the Red White and Blue Hwy signs that read Historic Lincoln Highway. The interstates chopped up segments of the LH and this one came to look like and be a residential street, if not for the sign I wouldn't ever guess that half mile stretch of road was in fact a US Hwy. I'm not going to mark it as such in Waze, because the residents would not appreciate a sudden influx of misrouted Wazers, nor would the Wazers appreciate the routing.


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[Daknife]

One more quick correction to a comment by Sketch on the last page. There is more than one scenic route. US-89 alt is also a scenic route, it goes from Kanab Utah south into the Grand Canyon (it's how you get to the North Rim park entrances) and crosses the Colorado down in the Canyon before rejoining 89 proper.

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[Daknife]

US 89 Scenic is marked as such. So how it can be so marked and not be so is beyond me.

As to the other segment, it's not in competition with the Interstate or US 89, but with other arterial routes (I don't recall the SR designators at the moment. SR-73 and 114 are both almost 100 miles away from where I am referring to.
In this case were I to mark that section of road as a Major Hwy it would get routing preference over the Minor Hwy routes that are the arterials the one it comes off of is under construction and does see major slowdowns, the other end of that segment is a primary street and is a suggested detour, but not through that neighborhood, the detour is at a higher capacity intersection and connector, but if I suddenly change the segment to Maj Hwy, it WILL dump a lot more traffic onto a road that cannot and should not handle it.

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[Daknife]

A bit more on my example, my point was originally that some designations are kept and signed for historical purposes. The segment in question is not even a SR at this point (it's in Riverdale UT) much of the Historic Lincoln Hwy in that area is a SR, this segment has lost even that designation.

The Key is that the Lincoln Hwy is not part of the US Highway system, it isn't a local name, It is a National Historical route, but one that hpos frequently between road classifications, much of it's lenght it is US Hwy, other areas it is SR, other areas are part of the Interstate System (I-80 across the salt flats). Further the designated route has either been changed to match newer improved roads (like the Interstate in some areas) or has been downgraded all the way to residential street having a prior US route designation taken from it to be used on newer, better nearby arterials.

But the Lincoln Hwy, the first Highway, does still exist running coast to coast and carries the designation hwy, even if the street is not a hwy by today's standards.

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[Daknife]

On that we can agree and that was my original point. Maybe I was misunderstanding but I read the conversation at that point as saying the Lincoln Hwy should be marked as such because of it's historical status, you said (my interpretation) nobody is keeping such designations for historical reasons, and so I pointed out a section of said Hwy that is not and should not be marked as Maj Hwy, even though it is part of the original hwy as built.

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[Daknife]

Not entirely, in that area yes existing roads were linked together, but in many areas new roads were built, introducing a newer higher quality engineering.

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[Daknife]

One word, Construction. As I mentioned in another comment changing the road to a preferred road type would dump traffic because of a major construction project nearby, the sectin in question runs between a mH and a Primary road, a good deal of traffic is being diverted over to the primary road, but on a road designed for increased capacity. Further I also stated that my point was in reguards to what I understood as someone claiming the Lincoln Hwy as equal to a US Hwy.

So no, there is no need to change the road type. But should such a change be made it would in fact result in a great deal of traffic being dumped onto that road as the construction currently has speeds well below the 25 mph of the residential road.

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[Daknife]

Could it be possible to have every state champ create a list of sorts for how every state recognizes and classifies their road types, then submit this information in one massive pool with all the champs to examine?

Just a nitpick. Not every state has a champ. A state may have an L6 CM like me but no champ, or may not even have an L5 CM.

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