Skip to main content

Reason for Decommisioning US 311 Business in High Point

During the last AASHTO SCOH US Route Numbering Committee meeting in November, NCDOT had an application for decommissioning US 311 Business through High Point accepted. The application referred to the action 'being at the request of local officials.' I sent an e-mail to the contact person listed on the application about a month ago to see if I could get more details and finally got a response yesterday (12/10). According to this NCDOT staffperson, local officials requested the application to remove US 311 Business from the former US 311 route on Main Street to end confusion and reduce clutter.

The exact quote in his e-mail was "A resolution was passed March 19th 2007 from the High Point City Council requesting the deletion of US 311 Business indicating the following reasons: reduce the confusion between US 311 and Business; allow Main Street to be the primary designation along the old US 311 designation (reducing sign clutter); and providing flexibility in association with the High Point Core City Plan."

While I don't have the 'core plan', the emphasis on the use of NC 68, whose interchange with US 311 (I-74) is to be modified, to be the main entrance to High Point may be part it, the route to the city center is shorter. Notice the resolution was passed in 2007 but not forwarded to AASHTO until November of this year. This is not uncommon from looking a list that includes state routing changes approved by NCDOT discussed below. The official state route of the
Durham Freeway (NC 147), extending it from Erwin Road to I-85 was approved in 2001, 9 years after the road opened in 1992 to US 15/501 and 3 years after it made it to I-85.

I was also forwarded in the e-mail an interesting link on the NCDOT website. A page listing changes in routing to Interstates, US Routes, NC Routes, and SR Routes over the past 13 years or so (this is where I got the NC 147 info). The page is located here:
http://www.ncdot.gov/doh/preconstruct/traffic/safety/tsi/routes.html

There are many interesting things to be found on this list, The two entries for I-795, for example, reflect that the first application was rejected by AASHTO, while the second one was accepted. There are some discrepancies too. When the new US 64/264 freeway opened, the old US 64/264 became Business US 64. According to the documents submitted to AASHTO, the route goes along the old 64 route starting in Knightdale then goes onto I-440 and ends at the new US 64/264. However, the state routing documents have the business route only on the old 64 route and ending at I-440. This is what the signing unit uses to post route markers, and is one reason there are no Business 64 references on I-440. The signing unit isn't very fast either. NC 6 was officially decommissioned in 2004, yet signs with the route on I-40 existed until this year.

Feel free to look through the list. Others investigating it have found applications for routes yet to exist. Adam Prince found an application for NC 452 which would have been the designation for the Western Half of the Winston-Salem Northern Beltway. The NC 452 designation was approved in 1999 just before construction was to begin. Work never began due to a lawsuit and who knows when, or if, it will be built. I suspect the 452 number was a placeholder, like NC 752 was before it was re-designated I-74 when it was completed from I-77 to first US 601 then US 52. Now that the I-74 eastern section is to be built first, it's possible to perhaps sign the western-half I-274 from the start.

The NC 452 route designation was also after NCDOT's request that US 52 north of where the Beltway would have tied in to Mt. Airy be signed I-74 was rejected. The FHWA requested upgrading of US 52 first, a project that still isn't funded. Thus NC 452 signs would have appeared on completed sections of the western route. Once the entire western half was completed, and the US 52 upgrading at least funded, NCDOT would probably have then requested the I-274 designation at least to I-40. The 274 number first appeared publicly in NCDOT's Strategic Highway Corridors Triad Vision map that came out in 2004.

Commentary:
If I were NCDOT, after I-74 is at least completed to I-85 (hopefully next year), I would do to US 52 what was done along the pre-existing US 311 freeway west of High Point last year. Put up signs marking the route Future I-74/US 52 and change the exit numbers to I-74 based mileposts. Routes filling in for the missing Beltway (US 52 to/from I-40 and I-40 to/from US 311) could be signed 'To I-74' as was approved by AASHTO back in 1997. This would at least 'complete' an I-74 route from the VA border to I-85 in High Point and in a couple years to I-73 in Randleman.

Comments

Dave said…
Right under the NC 147 entry is an entry for NC 148, a new NC state highway. The document shows NC 148 to run from US 258 to NC 58 just south of the Kinston airport.
Adam said…
This is most likely the road that shows as 'limited access at-grade' at the Global Transpark. Might take a trip there in January.
Dave said…
More nuggets from the site:

The section of the former US 117 freeway south of the end of I 795 is now designated NC 581 Connector south to NC 581 and NC 581 has been rerouted from along US 13 to along the former US 117 route.

Front Street in Wilmington from US 421 to the bridge is now designated as US 421 Truck.

The connector from US 117 in Calypso to NC 403 is now US 117 Connector and continues to I 40. This may be Future I 795.

NC 143 has a business route along Main Street in Robbinsville.
Adam said…
I can confirm that US 421 Truck in Wilmington is already signed.
Anonymous said…
I would originally have suggested that the stretch of Bus 311 be renamed NC 66 through High Point but there is a proposed extension of NC 66 to the west of High Point on the HP DOT street plans. I would actually suggest that the road formally to be formally known as US 311 be renamed NC 42 from Asheboro all the way from Old US 220 along the current US 311 to the point north of High Point where BUS 311 intersects with the 311/I-74 expressway.

Popular posts from this blog

Old River Lock & Control Structure (Lettsworth, LA)

  The Old River Control Structure (ORCS) and its connecting satellite facilities combine to form one of the most impressive flood control complexes in North America. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Red River and Atchafalaya River nearby, this structure system was fundamentally made possible by the Flood Control Act of 1928 that was passed by the United States Congress in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 however a second, less obvious motivation influenced the construction here. The Mississippi River’s channel has gradually elongated and meandered in the area over the centuries, creating new oxbows and sandbars that made navigation of the river challenging and time-consuming through the steamboat era of the 1800s. This treacherous area of the river known as “Turnbull’s Bend” was where the mouth of the Red River was located that the upriver end of the bend and the Atchafalaya River, then effectively an outflow

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

California State Route 203 the proposed Minaret Summit Highway

California State Route 203 is an approximately nine-mile State Highway located near Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Mono County.  California State Route 203 as presently configured begins at US Route 395, passes through Mammoth Lakes and terminates at the Madera County line at Minaret Summit.  What is now California State Route 203 was added to the State Highway System in 1933 as Legislative Route Number 112.  The original Mammoth Lakes State Highway ended at Lake Mary near the site of Old Mammoth and was renumbered to California State Route 203 in 1964.  The modern alignment of the highway to Minaret Summit was adopted during 1967.   The corridor of Minaret Summit and Mammoth Pass have been subject to numerous proposed Trans-Sierra Highways.  The first corridor was proposed over Mammoth Pass following a Southern Pacific Railroad survey in 1901.  In 1931 a corridor between the Minarets Wilderness and High Sierra Peaks Wilderness was reserved by the Forest Service for po