The Strange World Of Unsigned Interstates

What if I told you that America was home to a small group of secret interstate highways that the public has no idea about? This sounds pretty cool, but they're far less awesome than you likely imagine in your head. These are unsigned interstates, and they're a small grouping of highways known by very few. Importantly, they do still serve an important purpose, making them very fascinating to highlight. Some just as normal as any other highway, but others are some of the dumbest routes you'll ever see. Before we get into that though, please consider subscribing to the channel if you enjoy the content. It's very helpful for me as I work to grow the channel. Thank you! So what is an unsigned interstate? Well, a lot of these highways exist for one main purpose, and that's government funding for construction and upkeep. This as opposed to state highways, which receive only state funding, and local highways, which are just local funding. The difference then between interstates and US highways is mostly within that limited access nature, but importantly, interstates do receive a 90% federal funding share, while US highways only have a federal share of 80%. Either way, an unsigned interstate occurs when a highway is looking to get into that beloved interstate system, most times only with the intention of getting the funding, but the routing just ends up not making enough sense. I'll give you a big example. This is the I-444 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It stretches 2.8 miles and completes the inner loop around the city's downtown with I-244, but it's concurrent with US-75 for its entire length. Our issue comes with there being an inner loop that involved Interstate 244 in the North and West, US-412 in the North, US-75 in the South and East, and then I-444 in the South and East. There's a lot going on here. Furthermore, if someone like a police dispatcher tries to say Interstate 444, there's a possibility that's going to come across as I-44, which is also in the city. This all illustrates the name of the game today, which would be confusing signage. Because of this, Oklahoma's solution was to not include any signs that say I-444, and basically just forget it exists. Thus, it became an unsigned highway, a ghost highway if you will. Apparently, it was signed until 1995 when they eventually removed the signage, but there are no images of that. They must not have invented the camera by 1995 or something, I don't know. Either way, with this change, they retain the funding, but don't deal with any of the downsides with signage. Because of the lack of consequences states and localities face with unsigned highways, these highways get worse and worse the deeper you get. So let's take a look. This is I-194 in North Dakota. It's a completely normal interstate up until the Missouri River Bridge, but from there it's unsigned up until Washington Street. I have no proof, but my theory is that this may have something to do with funding a bridge over the Missouri River without making it a full freeway. The complete disregard for all interstate standards then begins. The median is subpar here. There are full-on curbs, which is completely against interstate rules, and there's sidewalks. In this situation, Google Maps has I-194 signed up until the unsigned portion ends, but honestly for this entire issue, Google Maps has no idea what to do with it a lot of the time. Sometimes they label it, sometimes they don't, it just depends on the situation. Louisiana has a situation where there was a disagreement between state and federal government. Not the first time that happened in New Orleans, but this one's much less impactful than Hurricane Katrina. Currently, the unsigned I-910 stretches from downtown New Orleans all the way across the river and through the metropolitan area, and this is cosigned with the US-90. The issue here is that this is along the routing of future I-49. The federal government said they're good to put up the I-910 signs, but I guess Louisiana just really wanted I-49 to be finished, which is still not finished. So they said, nah, we're good, we'll just place down future corridor signs for I-49. Going off that lack of consequences, unsigned interstates are known to be very short. Like Interstate 878, for example, which is one of the only interstates that is only eastbound for just .7 miles near the JFK airport in New York. You'll notice this numbering is based off of I-78, which ends coming into Manhattan, while I-78 was actually meant to push right through Manhattan and down to JFK. This map is entirely approximate. Either way, I-878 was originally along that proposed route. So when everyone realized Robert Moses was a dingus and New York didn't need to look like Houston, they decided not to build I-78 that far. Therefore, they made this little portion, I-878. Another short one is I-315 at 0.83 miles. It's unsigned, and it's also I-15 business and US-89, simply existing from the interchange to this exit, which is aptly named Exit 0. Yeah, this interstate is so short, they couldn't even call it Exit 1. This one came from when Great Falls put forward their proposed urban interstate route. I guess they didn't think they deserved an entire urban route to their downtown, so they went a little bit more low-key with it. Yes, I'm certain this one just has to do with funding. These people make me sick. Now, you've had enough of these boring examples. Let's talk about Puerto Rican interstates for the first time on this channel, because they do technically exist. There's Interstate PR-1, Interstate PR-2, and Interstate PR-3, much like what you find in Alaska and Hawaii. In this situation, though, they also go along that unsigned format. And it's not like they've really adopted the numberings or anything. Again, it's all about the money here. PR-1 runs for 71 miles from Ponce right up the middle into San Juan. It's cosigned with Highway 52, and the cool news here is that it's actually a freeway, something we can't expect from the interstate system, despite what you may think. PR-2 runs then from Ponce and along the coast, serving the west side of the island for 138 miles, before ending in San Juan. This highway is where interstate standards go out the window. Here's a couple of examples of roads intersecting with it. And here's a full stoplight in Ormigueros. Very disappointing, Puerto Rico. PR-3 finally goes east from San Juan and runs 55 miles, and serves that part of the island. This also really is just a divided highway with plenty of stoplights. With this entire system, it feels like the US just asked if they could put interstates in Puerto Rico, and they weren't going to turn down the funding, so they just said, okay, sure. Now let's go to Maine and talk about their complete interstate reshuffling that involves an unsigned interstate. I-495 used to run north from Portland through Lewiston and connect back up with I-95 in Gardner. I-95 would go down through Brunswick, but down in Falmouth, there was an issue. To stay on I-95, you would have to take this spur connection and cut over. It was confusing. So in the early 2000s, they completely rerouted the system, turning this into I-295 and this into I-95, leaving the Falmouth spur as the odd string of highway out. It ended up being I-495, but with the goal of not completely confusing everyone, since they already did that, they left it unsigned. And for my final segment, here's a highway I think really should be unsigned. I-238 in California makes no sense. Since there is no I-38, and spur routes usually take that parent number, it's only about two miles connecting to I-880, and it makes me very mad, and I think it relates perfectly to the Falmouth spur. Rather than giving it a made-up interstate numbering, let's put 2I-580 on the sign, or 2I-880. Now would this relieve confusion? I don't know, but it would make me very happy. Overall, the interstate system is where we find hundreds of tiny little quirks and interesting oddities. Pretty much every single unsigned interstate is interesting for its own reason. Sure, a lot of these are similar, but it's still important to cover. Thanks for watching. Thank you so much to the members this week. I really appreciate all of you and how much you've helped out the channel over the past few years. If you want to become a member, the link is down in the description below. No, you're not going to get any crazy perks, you're just helping me out as a person. I promise all of this is going to go into my savings account, so if you want to help me out as a person, this is the best way to do it. Thank you so much.