Exceptions
The standards have been changed over the years, resulting in many older Interstates not conforming to the current standards, and yet others are not built to standards because to do so would be too costly or environmentally unsound.
Some roads were grandfathered into the system. Most of these were toll roads that were built before the Interstate system came into existence or were under construction at the time President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. The most notable example is the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which originally had a very narrow median that later required the installation of a Jersey barrier due to heavy traffic loads.
Interstate 93 through Franconia Notch, New Hampshire is also a notable exception being a super two parkway with a speed limit of 45 miles per hour.
Interstate 35E through Saint Paul, Minnesota is an example of a freeway that was not grandfathered into the system that is nonetheless an exception to standards. The freeway was not opened until 1990, has a speed limit of 45 MPH, and does not allow vehicles weighing over 9,000 pounds GVW. This is due to a number of lawsuits from wealthy surrounding homeowners, which heavily delayed and modified the project dating to the 1960s.
Interstate 75 on the Mackinac Bridge between St. Ignace and Mackinaw City, Michigan, is undivided. The bridge was designed before the start of the Interstate Highway System, and it was grandfathered into the system.
Read more about this topic: Interstate Highway Standards
Famous quotes containing the word exceptions:
“... people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fools’ caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“For true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. Hence, it is time to say aloud—and it is here above all that exceptions prove the rule—that everything that exists in nature exists in art.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)