Business Route - The Formation of Business Routes

The Formation of Business Routes

Business routes typically follow the original routing of the numbered route through a city or town, and were largely created during the era of the large-scale highway construction in the U.S. from the 1930s through to the 1970s. As U.S. Highways and Interstates were built, they would typically begin in the first phase of their development with the numbered route carrying traffic directly through the center of a given city or town. In the second phase of their development, bypasses would be constructed around the central business districts of the towns they had once passed directly through. As these bypasses were built, the original sections of these routes that had once passed directly through a given city or town would often be designated as “business routes”.

In many cases prior to the construction of such bypasses, local business would attempt to exert legal and/or legislative pressure for these bypasses to be routed so as to maximize access between their businesses and the proposed bypass loops, while federal planners might attempt to route such bypasses with less concern for the welfare of the businesses being bypassed.