Highways that are NOT Interstates?

June 5, 2009 6:27 AM

Planning a road trip. Is there a place I can find a list of 4-lane, 55 to 55+ MPH highways that are NOT Interstates?

I'm going to be taking a Month-long road trip of the US, south of the Great Lakes and East of the Mississippi River, with no particular destination.

I'd like to stay off Interstates as much as possible, but I don't want to get stuck behind someone doing 35 in a 55 on a 2-lane highway for 50 miles.

Here are 2 Pennsylvania examples of what I'm looking for and what I'm looking to avoid:

Looking for:
Route 309 between Montgomeryville PA and Allentown PA. 4 lanes, 2 in each direction, 55-65 posted limits, a stoplight every 10 miles or so in a smallish town.

Looking to avoid:
Route 6 between Scranton PA and Mansfield PA. 2 lanes, 1 in each direction, lots of lights, 55 posted but nowhere to escape a slowpoke.

All information is appreciated. Id be very interested in Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. NON-Toll preferred.

Thanks in advance!

posted by sandra_s to travel & transportation (7 comments total)

Shunpiker's Guide should give you the 411 http://www.amazon.com/Shunpikers-Guide-Northeast-Washington-Interstates/dp/0939009102
posted by beezy at 7:01 AM on June 5

Ohio State Route 32 meets your criteria. From West to East this would cover Cincinnati, lots of small towns, Athens (home of Ohio University) and the Parkersburg, WV. From there, you can pick up the North South running I-77 or US Route 50 will take you across WV to Clarksburg and I-79 which leads you due north through Morgantown, WV (home of West Virginia University), Washington, PA and then Pittsburgh.
posted by mmascolino at 7:21 AM on June 5

You might do best to write to the tourism bureaus of the states in question and ask them to send you a printed copy of their official highway maps. (Disclaimer: I actually haven't done this myself in 15 years, so they may not still do it due to budget constraints.) Generally such maps use different types of lines to indicate whether highways are limited-access (i.e. "freeways"), multilane & divided, or two-lane.

Here are the ones I could find on my Indiana state map that aren't just minor spurs or widenings of a mainly two-lane road (i.e., ones you could actually travel some distance on):

• US-30, entire length
• US-31, South Bend to Columbus (through Indianapolis)
• US-24, Fort Wayne to Logansport
• IN-3, Fort Wayne to Kendallville
• US-41, Hammond to IN-63 junction and Terre Haute to Evansville
• IN-63, US-41 junction to Terre Haute
• US-52, US-41 junction to Lebanon
• IN-67, Indianapolis to Martinsville
• IN-37, Indianapolis to Mitchell
• US-40, entire length (through Indianapolis)
• US-50 and US-150, Vincennes to Washington

posted by Johnny Assay at 7:28 AM on June 5

Oh, the other option (and one that might not take as much time as writing to the tourism bureaus) is to buy a Rand McNally Road Atlas. I think these also have the different kinds of roads marked differently, and as a bonus you have all 50 states in one place rather than several large and unwieldy maps.
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:33 AM on June 5

Oh I should add that Wikipedia is pretty darn good about having details about the major (and somewhat minor) state and federal highways. There is a collector of all sorts of information apparently.
posted by mmascolino at 7:35 AM on June 5

To amplify on Johnny Assay's answer, go to a truck stop and buy the laminated version of the Rand McNally atlas. It's laminated and spiral-bound, which means it stays open to the page where you have it. It's absolutely worth the price- Retail is about 29.00 last time I looked.
posted by pjern at 8:42 AM on June 5

This is an old map I scanned a while back, but could be a starting place: the pre-interstate national highway system. Most states have kept theirs in good shape, and many (at least in my experience, in ND/MN/WI) are 4-lanes today. Some do overlap with the freeway today, but if your interest in travelling back roads is to see medium-sized communities that are still regional centers of commerce, and are likely to have places of interest to a tourist (parks, museums, statues, etc.). The reason interstates go around the main streets of towns is to avoid the stoplights-and-two-lane stranglings of those towns; off-interstate 4-lane roads are almost always going to tighten down to 2 lanes and have stop lights when passing through towns.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:12 AM on June 5 [1 favorite]