1955 Louisiana Highway Renumbering - Renumbering

Renumbering

Post-war efforts to make improvements to Louisiana's inadequate highway system reached fruition at the 1955 legislative session, where a comprehensive highway bill was passed that year and enacted into law. The new law effected a comprehensive revision of state highway classification and numbering, in order to designate roads by importance to travel patterns and to rectify the confusing numbering system by marking primary travel routes under unified designations.

One element of the highway reform lobby's efforts that was left out of the 1955 highway law was a proposal to reduce the amount of state-maintained mileage, mainly by shedding the many miles of minor and local service roads the state had accumulated over the years for political and other reasons. According to one proposal by the Louisiana Legislative Council, the 16,000 miles (26,000 km) or so which existed in the state system at the time would have been ultimately reduced to around 9,000 miles (14,000 km) through the turnback of all but the most important farm-to-market roads. Thus to this day, Louisiana retains an inordinately large state highway system which continues to contain many miles of roads that would be otherwise locally maintained in other states. Louisiana's state highway system ranks 10th nationally as a proportion of all road miles in the state.

The 1955 renumbering renumbered all routes based on an A-B-C system of route classification: A was primary, B secondary, and C farm-to-market. The A routes mainly comprised one and two digit highways, the B routes primarily comprised three digit routes below 300. All routes 300-1241, along with parts or all of a very few lower-numbered routes, were classified C routes. Numerical clustering was and is still apparent in the ranks of routes 300 and up (excluding 3xxx routes), especially with routes 700 and above. The A and B "primary" route range was 1 to 185. No 2xx numbers were used; this range may have been intended as an expansion area for future primary route designations (this was never done). LA 191 was added around 1980 as the Toledo Bend Scenic Drive, and is the only primary route designation to be added after 1955.

The 1955 route redesignations took effect on June 30 of that year.