The U.S. Interstate Highways, Ranked | MapQuest

[MattSh]

Note that this only ranks the 2-digit interstates.

Only truckers give valentines to the U.S. interstates. Most vacationing road-trippers clog their adoration, instead, on the "blue highways," two-laners like Route 66.

Those are the ones where you feel the changing contours of the land, and drive through Main Streets that interstates miss. Who likes an interstate? After all, it's those streamlined roads, as John Steinbeck predicted bitterly in 1962, that let one "drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing."

That's hardly fair. Interstates were "the greatest public works project in history," per Earl Swift in The Big Roads. They were designed not to entertain, but to move people quickly (and safely). And yet, Steinbeck's wrong too. No interstate can outrun what's outside the window—a desert, a Rockie, a swamp, a beach, or witness that change in lighting of a southwestern dusk, or the size of a western sky, or even the steamy air in a southern night. In Roads, Larry McMurtry notes that "a thousand McDonald's will not make Boston feel like Tucson." While Robert Sullivan, who crossed the country 30 times, finds value even in familiar chains clustering exit ramps. "The real America is the farthest thing from people's minds when they are stopping for fast food," he writes without cynicism in Cross Country. "But there it is, the real America, right there."

Ranking the Lower 48's two-digit, primary interstates—66 in all, 47,000 miles (and counting)—is a subjective business. What do you make of an I-70? In parts it's bumper-to-bumper with commuters, elsewhere isolated fields of corn.

To help, we turned to algebra, and created a "traffic rating" based on vehicle travel miles per mile of interstate (1.0 is least busy, 5.0 the most). We weigh that against the general joy of the ride as a whole, often rewarding longer highways—the true "interstates"—or thematic regional rides, over mere connectors to suburbs or coastal towns.

Complete story at - http://www.mapquest.com/travel/articles/us-interstate-highways-ranked-21144041#chapter-21144051

[handmade34]

1. "On the Road Again..."

back to work and I will be traveling I-90 all day Sunday and Monday

I-90 needs to fire its Brand Manager. As the USA's longest interstate, it is the King of the Plains, Big Sky Central, the Northern Delights, or perhaps the Road Not to Take in Winter.

But we think of it simply as America's Great Road.

If you are going to make one cross-country trip in your life, look close at I-90. Robert Sullivan, author of Cross Country, has gone coast to coast at least 30 times, and picks this as his favorite. It's less trafficked than I-10, I-40, I-70, I-80 (the other four main east/west options). On its way, it goes from Boston's Freedom Trail to almost within the spray of Niagara Falls, into rock'n'roll HQ in Cleveland then Chicago, across the plains to Wall Drug's throw-back free water and Mt Rushmore, to the world's first dude ranch, past Custer's last stand at Little Bighorn, over Idaho's Fourth of July Summit, and reaching birthplace of something called Starbucks.

We bow to you I-90, the greatest interstate in the USA.

[2naSalit]

2. That sounds like an interesting read.

I drove that route for years, took it whenever the opportunity arose simply because of lack of traffic and better road conditions in winter. I drove semis for a long time and that was the preferred northern route. Back in the 1970s you could go a good half day before seeing another vehicle going in either direction out in the western states. Once you got east of the twin cities, it was another world entirely... bad pavement and roadbed instability and traffic. Chicago was something to avoid, the two-lanes to the south were used by the regional drivers who knew their way around. And blizzards could happen at the south end of Lake Michigan at any time of year... but the fireflies on summer nights lit up the landscape in uncommon beauty with heat lightning pulsing in the distant sky. The cities speak for themselves.

As far as winter driving across the western segment, beyond the twin cities (have to get away from the lakes) the roadbed freezes and the snow is less likely to stick to it, often the snow just "snakes" across the pavement and evaporates the snow/ice off the pavement. Be cause it normally stayed cold all winter there was little to no melting creating messy ice patches. Now it can be a real drag with all the oil field traffic.

[Ron Green]

3. I'm saddened to think of what this nation lost

when it was decided to build the long-distance car and truck system rather than keep the world's greatest passenger rail network from being sold off and dismantled.

The Interstates created a car culture, but without one line of poetry in it.

[MisterP]

4. and, worse, the urban and metro rail lines weren't just sold off, even the land

was dismembered so you couldn't put new tracks back in once it needed an upgrade from streetcars (which can't carry enough for the postwar cities even if cars had been banned from existence)