Don’t you hate misleading headlines? I’m not really revealing a secret because it hides in plain sight. The information was publicly available as long as one knew where to search for it. I’m talking about a so-called “secret” Interstate highway route recently outed by the District Department of Transportation in Washington, DC.
Unsigned Interstates
There are a number of secret Interstates. Actually, more properly transportation officials call them “unsigned” Interstates. Lists of them exist all over the place. I guess if I wanted to get even more technical I should call them unsigned Auxiliary Interstates because they all have 3-digit designations. I’m not a road geek so please forgive my lack of precision. I know this actually matters to some of the 12MC audience.
Lots of sites on the Intertubes insist that there are 21 secret interstate routes without bothering to list them, repeating the mantra verbatim as if it’s fact. The version of the list on Wikipedia includes 14 of them.
The most comprehensive list I found (meaning it requiring the least amount of effort using a search engine) is AARoads’ Interstate Guide. This site lists 22. However it includes four roads in Alaska and three in Puerto Rico, not all necessarily built to Interstate standards although they are part of the Interstate Highway system. Yes, I know, let’s try to not get too hung up on Interstates in a state that’s not connected to any other state or to a territory that’s not even a state. Similar issues exist for Hawaii and the District of Columbia. Let’s not take “interstate” too literally.
District of Columbia Interstate 695
Nonetheless, what I’m trying to say (and failing badly) is that there’s one less fewer 🙂 secret Interstate as of December 2011. The District decided to sign I-695. [link no longer available].
“Well, actually, there is an I-695 in DC and there has been on for a long time. But while residents and commuters are intimately familiar with I-295 and I-395, you can’t blame them for not knowing where I-695 is located; as far as we can tell it was not previously signed although it was shown on some maps. I-695 has been the designation for a portion of the Southeast/Southwest Freeway, beginning where I-395 enters the Third Street Tunnel and extending to the northern side of the 11th Street Bridge, a grand total of 1.4 miles”
Secret Interstates exist for lots of reasons. The most common cause is that they already had a well-established name when they were upgraded to Interstate status. I’m not going to talk about every instance –you are free to peruse the lists yourself — but I will select a few of my favorites.
Maryland Interstate 595
I’ve driven Maryland I-595 probably a hundred times. Anyone heading away from Washington, DC for a weekend at the nearest beach likely does the same. Growing up, I’d always thought of it as Route 50. Others call it the John Hanson Highway (map). It was a pretty difficult drive back then. Maryland upgraded the section from the Capital Beltway to Annapolis to Interstate standards in the 1990’s. They didn’t change the name because everyone, myself included, already believed it had a perfectly acceptable name. Nobody calls it I-595.
This unsigned Interstate highway extends nearly twenty miles, the longest in the system.
New York Interstate 478
I like New York I-478 because it’s mostly underwater. Most everyone calls it the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel (although Google Maps seems to like I-478). The Metropolitan Transportation Authority says that “When the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel opened in 1950, it was the longest continuous underwater vehicular tunnel in North America. It still is.” Drivers cross beneath the East River and Governors Island nearly two miles as they travel between Long Island and Manhattan. They get to pay a lot of money for the privilege too, if using cash.
UPDATE: this became the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel in 2012.
Louisiana Interstate I-910
Louisiana chose to designate I-910 as Business Route 90, extending from New Orleans to Westwego in Jefferson Parish (map). I like this one because it crosses the Mississippi River on the Crescent City Connection, subjecting drivers to the geo-oddity I described in, “Where West is East.” Louisiana does have a bit of an ulterior motive. They envision I-910 as part of a future extension of Interstate 49 that will stretch from here to Lafayette. Why rename it when it’s going to change anyway?
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