the worst spin is the old PA turnpike where instead of sending the drone over to the other end of the tunnel, there is only spin footage :( otherwise great!
Thank you. Maybe also use a different micro or a different room? There is some echo in your voice. But it is a great source of information, direct to the point.
Everybody wants to drive - but nobody wants to live beside a highway. This is great stuff you made. I like the natural way you voiced it. It's beautiful.
Amusingly, Baltimore's highway-to-nowhere was built with the intention that the extra-wide median would support the long-planned/never-built east-west subway. The controversy over its construction was a key story in the Freeway Revolts, and propelled a whole generation of political leaders into power in Maryland. Another remanent of this project was the ridiculously oversized interchange where I-70 meets I-695. The highway stub east of the beltway was intended to ultimately connect to the highway-to-nowhere, but has been transformed into a park-and-ride.
The I-70 thoroughfare was originally planned to go all the way through. I don't remember if the plans were before or after it, but it was ultimately stopped due to the existence of I95 and 895 already being in-place and the city didn't need or want a third highway. It is kinda funny to see the massive I70 suddenly fizzle out into a funky shape park and ride but I'm glad they didn't go through with building it
Regarding the I-70 Park-n-Ride terminus... Occasionally, if there is too much traffic congestion at the 695-N ramp (from 70-E), my GPS will tell me to take 70 to the very end and follow the U-turn around to get on 695-N from the exit ramp at the Park-n-Ride. Guess it saves a few minutes! And I always wondered why there are roads/exit ramps to nowhere near the 95 and 695 interchange (actually, just north of the Caton Ave exit off of 95). I see that every time I'm heading up 95 to points north of Baltimore. Seems likes it been like that for ages.
They even built stub ramps at the I-695/MD-702 interchange, because they were going to align it into there. They were only like 100 feet long and were removed relatively recently, with the exception of one on the south/eastbound side of 702, which continues to exist because it's built into a bridge.
@@EyeMWing And check out where Desoto Road passes under 95 -- just north of the Caton Ave exit off of 95. There seem to be exit/entrance ramps that were never finished. The one at the north end (near Georgetown Road/Bernard Drive) abruptly ends directly underneath 95. The street view of that area is pretty amazing -- looks like the 95 bridge was build right on top of the raised unused exit ramp.
This is the type of content that I love, and this channel is the only place I can get it. I Just spend my night switching back and forth between this and Google Earth
@@ryanrundell2934 idk I kinda just know what to look for… sometimes I just look at highways that end, and search all over the world. And went looking for abandoned stuff I just look for new growth areas. Hard to explain…
If you like this kind of content, you should take a look at the "Secrets of the motorway" series here on TH-cam, which has lots of stories about old roads in the UK.
@@2dollarbill650yes, I suspected from the thumbnail that was the stacks, but who knows, there could be another somewhere. I wandered around on it just before they connected up a couple of them.
CT 384 as well! Goes from Manchester to Bolton Notch. It was supposed to be I-84 and go to Providence. Rhode Island decided to not fund their part and CT stopped building at Bolton Notch.
I remember "the stack" in Connecticut from when I was a kid back in the late 1960s. The family would drive thru there when we were visiting relatives in western Connecticut. It was the "almost" there landmark. After awhile I came to realize that no other roads were using the other levels.
The Stack on I-84 is not a Highway to Nowhere. It’s been used as an interchange with Route 9 for several decades now. It’s true it was designed to be extended north of I-84 and that is unlikely to ever be built but the Stack is being used.
@@jaykoolis961 Yup, it's being used now, but back in the 1970s it just sat there with I-84 passing under it all with none of those levels getting used.
I am from Waukegan, glad to see the Amstutz mentioned. The empty land eat of the baseball field used to be Johnsmanville. Many movies used it as a filming location. It was built starting in 1968. The Blues Brother was filmed there.
Years ago, in San Jose CA, the over pass of I280 at Hwy 101 was a third level bridge to nowhere as the surface portion stalled. In the middle of the night, some one placed a VW Bug on that span, causing major embarrassment to officials as they struggled to figure out how to get it down.
Don't forget the Lighted Tree every December that was placed on the top bridge. Side note, Mad Magazine put the interchange on their cover that featured the great blunders of the world.
Holy crap.....number 5, 'The Stack'......I've literally built that EXACT thing numerous times on Cities Skylines! When you showed the aerial shot of it I did a double take because it looks exactly like my go-to interchange design! That's so weird lol
Full stack is a pretty common interchange configuration. Look at I-295/Grand Central Parkway interchange in New York City or I-85/I-285 (The Perimeter) in Atlanta. Another interesting configuration is a turbine, like the one at I-85/I-485 in Charlotte, NC. (North-east quadrant of 485 ring.)
A fun one to add is the Lake Ontario State Parkway in NY. It was intended as a lakeside link between Rochester NY and Niagra Falls, with plans to continue extending all the way to the Robert Moses parkway in Buffalo. The highway was ultimately about half built before the federally funded NY state thruway was constructed to the south. Enthusiasm for the project died off and so did funding leaving a 4 lane highway out to a pair of state parks that ends in the middle of farm country.
Just looked it up. Wow that parkway is way over built. I don't live too far in Southern Ontario, Will check it out next time taking I 90 east from Buffalo. thx for mentioning.
I was waiting for the Lake Ontario State Parkway to show up on this list... maybe even the Robert Moses... now renamed "Niagara Scenic Parkway". @JKSSubstandard the western part of the Lake Ontario State Parkway was built well after the Thruway - early 70's maybe? @BuildingTales did you consider either one?
The RT40 "road to nowhere" was originally to be called I-170 and would have been a spur from I-70 into downtown Baltimore. I-70 stops in a park and ride at what would have been the Security Blvd. exit. It would have linked to I-95 where the exit for O'Donnell St. is now. Part of the intended ramps are still there.
Parts of the PA Turnpike are built over another abandoned road, the South Pennsylvania Railroad, an attempt to build a competing southern rail passage across the state which was canceled after much of the grading had been done. The rights-of-way were then used for the trunpike.
Some of the tunnels had also been constructed hence why the turnpike narrowed from 4 lanes to 2 lanes as they entered the tunnels. They didn’t spend money widening them.
For ones outside the US, there's quite a few good ones around where I live in the Southeast of the UK. Most famously there's the London Ringways project which has multiple abandoned junctions around the London Suburbs (Jay Foreman has an excellent video on it too), some of which are (or were intended to be) absolutely huge! Perhaps less well known is a bit of road I drive quite regularly: the A27 near Arundel, which has a very obvious abandoned junction where the road just stops like many of the examples shown in this video! In fact now I think about it there's a TH-camr called Auto Shenanigans who's made many videos on some of the oddities of our highway network, so well worth a watch!
There were several highways to nowhere in Pottland, OR. They were canceled and money spent instead on the MAX light rail and to upgrade several surface arterial streets
The Baltimore US-40 segment was constructed with provision for rail transit in its median. The rail transit provision was originally planed to be used for an east west subway line proposed in the 1970s. An east west light rail line is presently being proposed to make use of it.
The abandoned PA Turnpike section is unique among these 8 in that it was actually a working highway that was abandoned rather than a never completed highway. Another famous abandoned highway is the stretch of PA 61 south of the near ghost town of Centralia, PA. Due to subsidence because of the mine fire underground, the highway was closed and PA 61 was rerouted onto a parallel local road. I recently saw a video that the abandoned roadway was covered over with dirt sometime in the post-Covid era to discourage graffiti artists and explorers as sinkholes had developed and poisonous gas was coming from the holes. Many states have partially completed highways and both PA and OH are chock full of them. Occasionally, they do get completed. US 30 across Ohio from Canton to the Indiana border back in the 1970s was a series of partially completed bypasses around many of the towns and cities where one or both ends of the bypasses ended in ghost ramps or "temporary" ramps. Eventually, sometime after the turn of the century, the segments were connected and US 30 is a four line highway or freeway for this whole stretch. Just east of Canton, US 30 still has an abrupt end and is mostly two lane until the WV border. In north-central PA, the Central Susquehanna Valley Thruway is under construction and will finally use the ghost ramps that currently exist at the north end of the US 11/15 Selinsgrove Bypass where the routes currently return to surface streets. It's been somewhere between 40 and 50 years since that short freeway stretch was completed. I grew up in that area and I honestly thought it would never be complete.
Good stuff!! Appreciate all those other ones, it’ll definitely be cool for me to look into those ones further And you’re totally right about the pa turnpike … I was on the fence if I should include it or pick a different one … but I had just hiked it, so figured I’d throw the video clips in there 😂
I know that US Route 30 is the Lincoln Highway and goes through Dekalb Illinois and also goes through New Lennox Illinois and Joliet Illinois where in Joliet Illinois that it crosses another famous highway known as Route 66. That intersection has marker signs saying both Historic Route 30 Lincoln Highway and Historic Route 66. I know about the Joliet area since I have family who lives in the Joliet Illinois area.
You and me both, the traffic on the strip has become such a pain in the rear. When that shopping center was added adding 2 more lights just upped the ante. Something that might have worked would be to get rid of the center lane and make it 3 lanes in both directions. Taking out most of the lights and having jug handles like they do in NJ. Have a light at each end and one at the shopping center in the middle. Don't get me wrong I'm happy it's finished as I drive tractor trailer and slogging through that on a Friday is daunting. 20 minutes plus to go 2.5 miles???? I'm glad the bridge is finished crossing the river so we don't have to go through Northumberland. I grew up in Danville so I know that area reasonable well. Do you remember the old traffic circle and the old bridge before the 4 lane bridge was built??? What a nightmare!!!
I'd like to add, that the road in Centralia was not filled with dirt due to poisonous gasses. The government used that excuse to lay the dirt down. The real reason was all the accidents happening on that stretch of roads. Many deaths and injuries have occurred there because of people on UTVs and dirt bikes. So, to keep from getting sued anymore, the state filled the highway with dirt. And now 100 years of history has been lost.
In NYC there are several uncompleted highways that were never completed. The Clearview Expressway (I-295) ends abruptly at Hillside Avenue. It was supposed to go to JFK Airport. Near the JFK, where the Baisley Pond Park is today is where the interchange with the Belt Parkway and the planned Nassau Expressway (I-878) was supposed to be. Speaking of I-878, I remember back in the late 1970s-early 1980s the maps still showed it under construction. Eastbound lanes were actually completed and for many years they served as a ramp to connect the Belt Parkway to Van Wyck Expressway (I-678) and the JFK Airport. In the 1980s 878 was extended to connect to Rockaway Boulevard to provide better access to the airport's cargo areas. In Nassau County 878 continues as a wide street with traffic lights to Atlantic Beach Bridge. On Staten Island, for many decades there was a trumpet interchange ramps over the Staten Island Expressway. This was supposed to be the connection to the Richmond Parkway. The rich NIMBYs on Todt Hill killed the northern part of the parkway, so now it ends at Richmond Avenue. The ramps were finally demolished in 2000s or 2010s during the construction of HOV lanes on Staten Island Expressway. On Long Island we have the Bethpage State Parkway. It was planned to start at Sunrise Highway and continue north to Woodbury. Only the part Southern State Parkway to near the Bethpage Golf Course was completed. Looking at the satellite view, however, one can trace the path of the parkway to where it would have connected with the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway, the Long Island Expressway and the Northern State Parkway. There even used to be an overpass on the LIE over the parkway's right of way, but it was demolished during the HOV lanes construction in the 1990s.
Me too! I've even driven on the new portion there in Greenfield. At the terminus there's a roundabout for parking and a walking/biking path as well as leading to the Greenfield Rd light. In the middle of the roundabout is a piece of art depicting goat silhouettes.
@daffers2345 I have driven the new portion several times. Just last week as I was going into the roundabout I took notice of the goats. It gave me a chuckle.
Connecticut has a really bad track record of failed highway projects. Another one is the Oak Street Connector in New Haven, which was supposed to connect the junction of Interstates 91 and 95 to Route 8 in the Lower Naugatuck Valley. In an attempt to achieve this, the city government tore down entire neighborhoods all the way to the West River and isolated The Hill neighborhood from downtown. They only completed about half a mile before canceling the project. Currently, they're paving over the only existing section of the Connector with new roads, walkways, and buildings in an effort to reconnect the city and undo past mistakes.
humm i ponder if someone/group controlling the purse strings has a stake in the company/companies building the roads.... better get Scooby-Doo and friends in to investigate 🙃
My family and just I traveled to Houston, which has a lot of the 4-layer "stack" interchanges that take up less land area than a traditional cloverleaf. I was thinking about what my father called "The Crazy Mixed Up Bridge" in Connecticut, not knowing it was nicknamed "The Stack" 3:55. We drove under it every year on our way up to Vermont to go camping. I always thought it was 4 layers tall because it was the hypothetical intersection of 4 highways, not knowing what it looked like from the air, and not knowing about the Stack Interchange. Fascinating! Brings back memories. Thank you.
"I was thinking about what my father called "The Crazy Mixed Up Bridge" in Connecticut, not knowing it was nicknamed "The Stack"" No, you father was thinking of the mix-master over Waterbury, CT which connects I-84 to Route 8. Its quite the spectacle.
@@guytech7310 Hey thanks for the feedback, but "The Stack" in Farmington, CT was what I personally remember, especially since the on-ramps and off-ramps all ended in gravel. The mix-master in Waterbury is fascinating because it's a "normal" interchange, bounded by a river, so all the connecting ramps had to be on one bank. But it's only 3 layers deep (two bridges tall) max. If you want a wild satellite view of an interchange, check out Plymouth Meeting, PA (476/276) because it joins three toll roads with one free one, back in the days with human toll takers, thus they had to have a toll plaza for all the possibilities.
The “mixmaster” in Waterbury was obsolete when it opened. No shoulders, left exits, abrupt entrances, narrow, as well as cheap “double decker” design. It was recently rehabilitated so they’re likely stuck with it for several more decades.
One that I see a few times per year on my trips is the Pike Road exit "Route 108" on I-85 east of Montgomery, AL. It took 30 years of planning just to get the first phase which is a 4 mile stretch from I-85 to Vaughn Rd, it opened in 2016 and the rest of the planned bypass has stalled. Instead of a bypass for faster access from I-85 to I-65, bypassing the insanity of Montgomery traffic and the current outdated I-85/I-65 intersection, the remaining 3 phases remain stuck in red tape, the old tiny town of "Pike Road" fighting it, and land owners not willing to give up their land.
Quite familiar with #1. Frequently went into Baltimore via this as a kid and later. Down 40 from my grandparents house literally on that highway a couple miles down. First off, it’s odd, but it isn’t really nowhere. Both ends connect to regular city street US 40. It became sort of a quick short bypass so you don’t have to stop at all those intersections you see. And don’t blame the bypass highway for problems. Baltimore became a big problem increasingly after the ‘60s, everywhere just about, not simply in this area.
I don't think that that section belongs on the list. Modern construction allowed two different tunnels to be either bypassed or additional tunnels built. I remember having 4 lanes merging to 2 so we could go through a two lane tunnel. Worse in the winter when the weather was bad.
There’s also the Richmond Parkway/Korean War Veterans Memorial Parkway in Staten Island NY. The southern part was built along with a full interchange at what would have been the northern end at the Staten Island expressway, but the part that actually would have connected to the Expressway was cancelled because of environmentalist opposition, and the interchange to nowhere was removed when the SIE was widened in the 2010s.
It's also why the Willowbrook Expressway ends suddenly at Victory Boulevard/College of Staten Island (then Willowbrook State School). The expressway was supposed to run down to Hylan Boulevard (and along the west side of that college), ultimately crossing the Richmond Parkway. To fill in the gap, the West Shore Expressway was built in the 1970s; prior to that point, Richmond Avenue carried NY 440.
Elgin-O’Hare highway in Chicagoland. They’re currently working on completing the “O’Hare” end from the current end on that side (after at least 25 years) but nothing even planned for the Elgin end. When you get to the end on that side you can see right where it was planned to go as it’s a long path of empty land, but there isn’t any highway there lol.
A side note if you will, there is a short stretch of roadway in Susquehanna County Pennsylvania that runs almost parallel to Interstate 81, apparently, when the local surveyors were laying out the route, they had "off read" the maps and had "moved" the interstate right through the local state game land's and there actually was about a mile of two lane roadway built including wire guide ropes at one end before the surveyors realized their mistake and realigned the highway to where it is now, the stretch of roadway lay abandoned for almost five decades before the state game commission rebuilt the road for access to the center part of the game land for hunters within the past decade,
The infamous Amztutz at least got used for some movie scenes. Plus they repaved it about 8-10 years ago, so it's much smoother to go like hell on for 2 miles.
Hartford county resident here, the I-291 beltway was cancelled because the route that was planned had a lot of environmental concerns. The planned route would disturb local water and gas line infrastructure.
Another good one is i-180 in Illinois. I believe it's the country's least traveled interstate. Built to connect I-80 to a steel mill that shortly thereafter went out of business.
So cool to see the Goat Path on here! I live very close by and have driven on the new portion. My grandparents lived next to the graded area on Willow Road (the house is gone now). Farther east along the Path, there's even an abandoned area where they started to build ramps and had to abandon it, and a bridge with no highway on top, just grass. It's kind if spooky, especially the abandoned ramp area.
NJ Route 90. About 5 miles. A planned expressway for South Jersey, it connects to I-95 in Philadelphia, the Betsy Ross Bridge, and three roads in Camden and Burlington Counties.
Here in Pittsburgh we have a single quarter mile long highway road in the middle of the suburbs far away from any other highway. Seemingly they planned to build a full highway back in the 70s but only got a single quarter mile done. I practiced highway driving there when training for my license.
The infamous abandoned I-170 connector in Baltimore definitely came to my mind. Another currently abandoned freeway is what’s now part of Bruce R Watkins Drive in Kansas City, Missouri. There were plans convert US 71 from I-44 all the way to the downtown loop in KCMO into an interstate. I-49 ultimately did get built from what’s now named as Three Trails Crossing (better known locally as the Grandview Triangle) to I-40 east of Fort Smith. There are 3 at-grade traffic lights on US 71 in KCMO. There is a wide median through that stretch. That section won’t be upgraded any time soon; those lights were written into law. 71 there is among the most dangerous roads in the Kansas City area.
The top photo of the Amstutz look to be the highway scene in Groundhog Day. The Amstutz was originally to be a lakefront connection between Chicago and Milwaukee, but the much more wealthy towns to the south of Waukegan and North Chicago did want a highway through their towns. And as well all know.... money talks.
I live in Alaska and have been to Ketchikan. To go from the airport into Ketchikan (or anywhere) you need to take the ferry between the islands. It takes about 90 seconds to cross, but there's other traffic on the water including fishing boats, pleasure boats, sea planes, and cruise ships. Also, the runway is significantly higher than the terminal. You taxi on a pretty severe incline and the pilots have to add a bit of throttle to make it up to the runway.
Wichita Falls TX - Loop 11 is a 3 mile 6 lane road coming from nowhere going nowhere that sees maybe 10 vehicles a day but it is the smoothest road in Texas.
390, elgin ohare expressway. Built a bridge abutment and bridge for overpass to what i believe was a parking lot ,field upgraded. Didn't know much about this eway till i worked on it . Legitimately connects two hubs, but never was fully realized. Im from chicago, lifelong resident. The funny thing was asking the engineer about completion and anticipated openings. There answer was in 5-10 years. It felt like the build it ,they will come mindset and of course the build America money was there 😮
This is super interesting to me. I live near Lancaster and visit sometimes and about a year ago I noticed the beginning of the construction of the walnut street extension, but haven’t seen it until now watching this video. It instantly came to mind when I was just watching your other video about highways to nowhere lol
I love to watch things like this. Find it really interesting plus it's a change from all the music and fitness I spend so much time in. I live in Wales and here in Britain we have 'Auto Shenanigans' channel on TH-cam. One of his series is' Secrets of the motorway' [highway] About the history and some abandoned or messy ones pop up at times. Thanks for making this. James.
I'm not surprised to see CT mentioned twice. My parents moved from CT to upstate NY when I was around 3. We would go back mutiple times a year to visit relatives and we started to notice a something, it would take CT 3-5 years to complete a road project that would take 1 year back in NY. I'm not even talking about big projects either, whatever they were doing as far as road work took forever for them to finish.
@@davestewart2067 the NIMBY troops had a lot of help from the environmental people circa 1970. Many things got delayed or the budget was blown away by "impact studies" to check for endangered flora / fauna.
You should see what Portland Oregon's once proposed freeway plans were many ghost ramps off off I-5 that once involved the 8 lane wide Mount Hood freeway through SE Portland
You also have the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway(the SOB) on Long Island originally intended to cross the Long Island Sound to Port Chester, NY, where it would connect with I-287. The bridge was never built and the 10 mile expressway(NY- 135) ends in Syosset.
For a while, part of SR-30 (the Foothill Freeway) was a sort of highway to nowhere from I-210 to Foothill Boulevard in the Glendora area. There were proposals to extend the freeway through Upland and Fontana to connect with a freeway loop around San Bernardino, but that was not constructed until the 90s. Of course, today this section of road is anything but a "highway to nowhere", but for decades it certainly was considering its abrupt end.
You could also do one on unending projects, like the Philadelphia side of the Betsy Ross bridge. I think it was completed in the late 70's or early 80's and they're still working on the ramps to connect it to I-95.
Take a look at the Samuel Clements Highway in Elmira, New York. My dad always called it "The Highway to Nowhere." Apparently there was never a successful connection to any other main highway and now it is just a road to cross Elmira from one end to the other.
I'm very familiar with that Stack in Connecticut. At least part of it was put to some use. On the abandoned PA Turnpike, Rays Hill tunnel was the shortest of the original seven tunnels at 0.7 miles while Sideling Hill tunnel was the longest at 1.3 miles.
There is another one in Boston. North bound rt93, on the upper deck there is a stub that veers off to the left. That was supposed to be the start of a highway that would connect to the rt3/rt95 interchange in Burlington Ma.
I-390 into O'Hare AKA the Elgin-O'Hare. Even among locals it's a mystery sometimes. Happy digging. A lot to unpack between the railroads, aviation industry, trucking industry, and local residents.Then there are utilities that want access to the stretch underground.
I believe now that they're finally constructing I-490 around O'Hare's westside, it will actually be connection to something more than 294. Only problem with it for me is the fact both roads keep getting called western O'Hare access roads yet all they do is connect you around to the eastern access point. If they're going to build these roads they need to have an alternate entry to O'Hare.
There is one long-forgotten Highway-to-Nowhere, that was in Sacramento, California. On the north side of Sacramento, a bypass for I-80 was being constructed to replace an outdated section of U.S. 40----including a dangerously sharp turn. All but the last 500 feet of the 3-mile bypass had been completed by 1970 (including all overpasses, ramps, and a mile-plus elevated section). The final 500-ft section would have to clip a far corner of the Haggin Oaks Golf Course. The golf course refused to give-up the land, and fought the city and state in court. Finally, after nearly two decades of fighting, the state abandoned the project. The entire project was later demolished (mid 90's) and the land was turned over to Sacramento's new "light rail" project.
You might also add WI 145, the Fond du Lac Freeway in Milwaukee. Originally part of Milwaukee's grandiose freeway planning in the 1960s, it was built through half of its route, and is now an underused freeway that starts at I-41 and sputters out around Capitol Drive.
Great video! Here's another entry: the Tri- Borough Road Cloverleaf Interchange in Florham Park NJ, over Route24; listed as a "historical site" by google maps. It was supposed to connect to the never-completed Eisenhower Pkwy extension.
The goat path in Lancaster Pa. was not abandoned because of a lack of funds. It was halted by politicians who were swayed away from the project to pay favor to the Pennsylvania Dutch tourist industry. You see the extension of 23 to meet route US 30 at Gap Pa. would take traffic off business route 30, the Lincoln Highway the home of 300 motels, all you can eat buffets, and the infamous Dutch Wonderland the castle amusement park in the center of the Amish vacation paradise. (What a castle has to do with the plain farm life of the Amish is a mystery to me). The citizens who live here have to deal with the traffic nightmare of business route 30 because the tourist industry thinks that a bypass would cause them to lose a nickel to the New Yorkers looking for some good old fresh air.
Makes sense. Would've been nice to see them use the 22 million towards redoing the project instead of just making a 2 lane road for a mile. 23 and 30 are impossible to travel especially during tourist season.
I was living in Branson >1986-1994< when the hype for the Ozark Mountain High Road was getting started. I lived south of town in the area where the plans called for the bypass to connect with U.S. 65 south of Branson. I laughed because I knew the highway would end at the fish hatchery and Table Rock Dam as it passed around the north and west of the Branson tourism area...which is basically what it does. People who knew what was really going on were calling it the Herschend High Road back then because they knew it was going to be an expressway connecting traffic from 65 to tourism properties west of Branson which are owned by Herschend Family Entertainment company. To be honest, I believe there was no real intention of the Ozark Mountain High Road to ever have the southern half of it happen.
Back in 1997-98, I lived in Lubbock, Texas. There was only one interstate in Lubbock in those days, it was I-27, and it went north to connect to Amarillo (120 miles). If you took I-27 south, and went through Lubbock, that road stopped in the middle of nowhere. Cotton fields everywhere. It was the damnest thing you would see. The moment you passed 98th Street, on the south side of Lubbock, you saw an entire interstate stop in a cotton field! 😂😂👨🏻🦳🇺🇸
There are a number around the Sacramento area. One overpass for an unbuilt freeway is now used for a light rail train route, while the one for the opposite side of the freeway is unused. There are also offramps that were supposed to be interchanges but now just dump out onto regular streets.
One good example, on Long Island, New York, is Suffolk County Route 46, also known as the William Floyd Parkway. While the road does connect to a park in the south, the north/south highway was originally created as a connection with a proposed bridge to Connecticut which was eventually rejected by Connecticut. It ends abruptly at NY State 25A.
Look at the Route 7 Connector in Connecticut it was supposed to go all the way to Danbury but wealthy people with money stopped it from going through their town
The Branson 465 highway was supposed to model I-465 in Indianapolis as a bypass. If a truck is carrying dangerous/flammable materials, they cannot utilize I-70, which cuts through downtown Indy, and must go around. Branson has a lot of traffic, but not the volume of that that goes about Indy.
I would put the Lake Ontario State Parkway that goes about halfway from Rochester to Niagara Falls and then just stops, On your list. So few people use it that recently they have stopped plowing it in the winter. It was supposed to connect with a similar parkway (the Robert Moses Parkway) coming from Niagara Falls but at some point maybe in the 1970s it got shelved after being half-built.
I work at the wastewater plant on the lakefront by the amstutz. It’s so useless it’s often chosen for movie scene shots, groundhogs day filmed on it (as shown) it was also used in dark knight, and ice harvest and a couple tv shows. I believe the idea was supposed to be a lakeside freeway straight shoot from Kenosha to Chicago and Waukegan hastily built it and the rest of the surrounding towns/cities were just like “nah.”
Cool video. I live in lancaster pa so the goat path with its ghost bridges and ramps always fascinates me. I also been on the new extention a few times which seems almost pointless. In fact it looks like they use it more as a dragway with all the tire marks. I also been to the abandoned turnpike many times. And also PA 61 in centrailia which was not mentioned before they covered it in dirt piles.
Thanks! And it’s definitely a work in progress as you can see, but the last month or so I’ve started to make a real effort to learn the editing side of things … so hopefully it will only get better from here on!
We had a small section of highway completed on Staten Island that was never used. It sat for decades and kids would go up there to get drunk. They finally demolished it.
The rt40 segment, while not technically a highway to nowhere, as it is still in use and many people use it, is very out of place compared to the rest of 40. Most of the Balto section of 40 is at-grade, slow, filled with stoplights and businesses and housing and it's a regular inter-city road. But then there's this section of lowered highway-style pavement that just looks off and feels weird and I guess now I know why. Supposedly there's plans to put the new RedLine in there between the sides of the street but there's enough other things there that it could prove to be too expensive
7:20 The abandoned Laurel Hill tunnel on the PA Turnpike has been used by Chip Ganassi Racing for wind tunnel testing by both IndyCar and NASCAR teams. No wind, no rain, perfectly repeatable real-world conditions, with no worries about the effects of the moving floor in a traditional test facility.
I think it is Schaumburg, Illinois. What do you think of Elgin-O'Hare Exspressway? In a another video, the person felf an exspessway near Quincy, Illinois is silly. what do you think?
I don't understand the Amstutz Expressway. I looked at it on a map and there are cars traveling on it. It has several exist, and an end and beginning that are accessible. I also don't get the one in Baltimore.
The amstutz highway was used for a movie back in the early 2010s, Now, it is a small highway that will take you between waukegan and some other place. I live in waukegan so i know all about this.
I remember going under a double decker bridge in central Illinois that lead to nowhere. They built the bridges in the early 80s for an expressway that wasn't built until the 90s I believe.
The section of North Second Street between Rockford Illinois and Loves Park Illinois was part of an never finished highway project hence it having ramps and overpasses / underpasses in some sections and some streets connect to it. Also two road bridges over the Rock River via ramps ( Whitman Street and Auburn Street / Spring Creek Road ) Also the former CN&W ( UP) Chicago to Janesville Wisconsin line crosses Auburn Street / Spring Creek Road also the connecting ramps to North Second Street then into Loves Park the tracks make an curve crossing North Second Street.
There is the original I-40 through Memphis. Also a unused I-755 in St. Louis, the stub ramps are gone now when a soccer stadium was built. Shreveport may end up having a highway to nowhere where ghost ramps are a permanent feature for I-49. It depends if they build that connector or not.
Another "highway to nowhere" is the planned extension of New Jersey 18, which ends at exit 6 in Wall Township. Originally planned to continue south from NJ 138 to Point Pleasant (5 1/2 miles south), political issues - namely its proximity to land owned by an influential politician who didn't want it disturbing his plans for developing his property - caused the cancellation of the remaining distance. And while the highway as it exists is still very useful from 138 all the way to New Brunswick (divided expressway from Wall to exit 30 and then non-expressway north until its termination at I-287 in Piscataway) it would have helped significantly reduce traffic south of Wall headed to the beach south of Belmar, instead of forcing it all onto the badly overcrowded route 35.
My bad, didn't realize the spinning was so disorienting to so many people... future videos will be less vertigo inducing!
I didn't even notice!
the worst spin is the old PA turnpike where instead of sending the drone over to the other end of the tunnel, there is only spin footage :( otherwise great!
Thanks. Yes the spinning was making me dizzy.
You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round...
Thank you.
Maybe also use a different micro or a different room? There is some echo in your voice.
But it is a great source of information, direct to the point.
Everybody wants to drive - but nobody wants to live beside a highway. This is great stuff you made. I like the natural way you voiced it. It's beautiful.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it
I could imagine how much drag racing happens on these abandoned highways
Probably not much since most of them have such high overlooks and limited entry ways so racers wouldnt have an easy escape route
How do they run in heels?
@@diegomontoya796Very carefully.
@@diegomontoya796 Like a bull in a China shop.
Going fast on bad road conditions is a recipe for disaster. Good idea but probably not practical
"No concrete plans." -- I see what you did, there. 🤣
Amusingly, Baltimore's highway-to-nowhere was built with the intention that the extra-wide median would support the long-planned/never-built east-west subway. The controversy over its construction was a key story in the Freeway Revolts, and propelled a whole generation of political leaders into power in Maryland. Another remanent of this project was the ridiculously oversized interchange where I-70 meets I-695. The highway stub east of the beltway was intended to ultimately connect to the highway-to-nowhere, but has been transformed into a park-and-ride.
Now that Baltimore is talking about reviving the Red Line project, maybe one day we'll see that subway eventually get built!
The I-70 thoroughfare was originally planned to go all the way through. I don't remember if the plans were before or after it, but it was ultimately stopped due to the existence of I95 and 895 already being in-place and the city didn't need or want a third highway.
It is kinda funny to see the massive I70 suddenly fizzle out into a funky shape park and ride but I'm glad they didn't go through with building it
Regarding the I-70 Park-n-Ride terminus... Occasionally, if there is too much traffic congestion at the 695-N ramp (from 70-E), my GPS will tell me to take 70 to the very end and follow the U-turn around to get on 695-N from the exit ramp at the Park-n-Ride. Guess it saves a few minutes!
And I always wondered why there are roads/exit ramps to nowhere near the 95 and 695 interchange (actually, just north of the Caton Ave exit off of 95). I see that every time I'm heading up 95 to points north of Baltimore. Seems likes it been like that for ages.
They even built stub ramps at the I-695/MD-702 interchange, because they were going to align it into there. They were only like 100 feet long and were removed relatively recently, with the exception of one on the south/eastbound side of 702, which continues to exist because it's built into a bridge.
@@EyeMWing And check out where Desoto Road passes under 95 -- just north of the Caton Ave exit off of 95. There seem to be exit/entrance ramps that were never finished. The one at the north end (near Georgetown Road/Bernard Drive) abruptly ends directly underneath 95. The street view of that area is pretty amazing -- looks like the 95 bridge was build right on top of the raised unused exit ramp.
This is the type of content that I love, and this channel is the only place I can get it. I Just spend my night switching back and forth between this and Google Earth
Thanks, glad you're liking the content! And I definitely agree about Google Earth... so much cool stuff to see on there!
How do you find cool stuff on google earth?
@@ryanrundell2934 idk I kinda just know what to look for… sometimes I just look at highways that end, and search all over the world. And went looking for abandoned stuff I just look for new growth areas. Hard to explain…
Same!
If you like this kind of content, you should take a look at the "Secrets of the motorway" series here on TH-cam, which has lots of stories about old roads in the UK.
As a life long Connecticut resident, I clicked to see if route 11 or the stacks would be included, and you did both!
Route 11 is nearly never patrolled and used by young drivers to see how fast you can go... guilty
I knew from the thumb nail. Never been there but have past under a billion times
@@2dollarbill650yes, I suspected from the thumbnail that was the stacks, but who knows, there could be another somewhere. I wandered around on it just before they connected up a couple of them.
I came here for route 11 also 😂
CT 384 as well! Goes from Manchester to Bolton Notch. It was supposed to be I-84 and go to Providence. Rhode Island decided to not fund their part and CT stopped building at Bolton Notch.
I remember "the stack" in Connecticut from when I was a kid back in the late 1960s. The family would drive thru there when we were visiting relatives in western Connecticut. It was the "almost" there landmark. After awhile I came to realize that no other roads were using the other levels.
I drove under it dozens perhaps over 100 times traveling New York to Boston... good to know about it after years gone by!
The Stack on I-84 is not a Highway to Nowhere. It’s been used as an interchange with Route 9 for several decades now. It’s true it was designed to be extended north of I-84 and that is unlikely to ever be built but the Stack is being used.
@@jaykoolis961 Yup, it's being used now, but back in the 1970s it just sat there with I-84 passing under it all with none of those levels getting used.
I am from Waukegan, glad to see the Amstutz mentioned. The empty land eat of the baseball field used to be Johnsmanville. Many movies used it as a filming location. It was built starting in 1968. The Blues Brother was filmed there.
I find the Stack especially fascinating as it has fully-functional roadways intertwined with never-used ones. Quite rare to see that I would think.
Definitely a unique piece of infrastructure!
Years ago, in San Jose CA, the over pass of I280 at Hwy 101 was a third level bridge to nowhere as the surface portion stalled. In the middle of the night, some one placed a VW Bug on that span, causing major embarrassment to officials as they struggled to figure out how to get it down.
Don't forget the Lighted Tree every December that was placed on the top bridge. Side note, Mad Magazine put the interchange on their cover that featured the great blunders of the world.
These sound like PERFECT places for your crazy street races!
The "stack" in Connecticut does get some use by POST to train police recruits in felony stops. I was in one of the classes back in the late 80's.
Holy crap.....number 5, 'The Stack'......I've literally built that EXACT thing numerous times on Cities Skylines! When you showed the aerial shot of it I did a double take because it looks exactly like my go-to interchange design! That's so weird lol
Full stack is a pretty common interchange configuration. Look at I-295/Grand Central Parkway interchange in New York City or I-85/I-285 (The Perimeter) in Atlanta. Another interesting configuration is a turbine, like the one at I-85/I-485 in Charlotte, NC. (North-east quadrant of 485 ring.)
A fun one to add is the Lake Ontario State Parkway in NY. It was intended as a lakeside link between Rochester NY and Niagra Falls, with plans to continue extending all the way to the Robert Moses parkway in Buffalo. The highway was ultimately about half built before the federally funded NY state thruway was constructed to the south. Enthusiasm for the project died off and so did funding leaving a 4 lane highway out to a pair of state parks that ends in the middle of farm country.
Great beach at Hamlin, tho.
Just looked it up. Wow that parkway is way over built. I don't live too far in Southern Ontario, Will check it out next time taking I 90 east from Buffalo. thx for mentioning.
I added same highway then saw your post.
I was waiting for the Lake Ontario State Parkway to show up on this list... maybe even the Robert Moses... now renamed "Niagara Scenic Parkway". @JKSSubstandard the western part of the Lake Ontario State Parkway was built well after the Thruway - early 70's maybe? @BuildingTales did you consider either one?
The RT40 "road to nowhere" was originally to be called I-170 and would have been a spur from I-70 into downtown Baltimore. I-70 stops in a park and ride at what would have been the Security Blvd. exit. It would have linked to I-95 where the exit for O'Donnell St. is now. Part of the intended ramps are still there.
Ultimately cancelled as i95 and 895 already existed and were functioning alright. I'm rather glad they they didn't build a third highway through there
It's still officially called I-170.
I really appreciate the way you explained each one.
Thanks!
Parts of the PA Turnpike are built over another abandoned road, the South Pennsylvania Railroad, an attempt to build a competing southern rail passage across the state which was canceled after much of the grading had been done. The rights-of-way were then used for the trunpike.
Very cool, I didn't know about that!
Some of the tunnels had also been constructed hence why the turnpike narrowed from 4 lanes to 2 lanes as they entered the tunnels. They didn’t spend money widening them.
There's also another "abandoned" Pa Tpk tunnel that's been used by Chip Ganassi Racing for wind tunnel testing!
@@xr6lad In the 60s, the tunnels were either dualized to match the four lanes of traffic, or bypassed, usually as a cheaper upgrade.
@@xr6lad until the 1960s "dualize the tunnels or bypass them" project due to increased traffic and the headon collisions with the two way originals.
For ones outside the US, there's quite a few good ones around where I live in the Southeast of the UK. Most famously there's the London Ringways project which has multiple abandoned junctions around the London Suburbs (Jay Foreman has an excellent video on it too), some of which are (or were intended to be) absolutely huge!
Perhaps less well known is a bit of road I drive quite regularly: the A27 near Arundel, which has a very obvious abandoned junction where the road just stops like many of the examples shown in this video!
In fact now I think about it there's a TH-camr called Auto Shenanigans who's made many videos on some of the oddities of our highway network, so well worth a watch!
There were several highways to nowhere in Pottland, OR. They were canceled and money spent instead on the MAX light rail and to upgrade several surface arterial streets
The Baltimore US-40 segment was constructed with provision for rail transit in its median. The rail transit provision was originally planed to be used for an east west subway line proposed in the 1970s. An east west light rail line is presently being proposed to make use of it.
The abandoned PA Turnpike section is unique among these 8 in that it was actually a working highway that was abandoned rather than a never completed highway.
Another famous abandoned highway is the stretch of PA 61 south of the near ghost town of Centralia, PA. Due to subsidence because of the mine fire underground, the highway was closed and PA 61 was rerouted onto a parallel local road. I recently saw a video that the abandoned roadway was covered over with dirt sometime in the post-Covid era to discourage graffiti artists and explorers as sinkholes had developed and poisonous gas was coming from the holes.
Many states have partially completed highways and both PA and OH are chock full of them. Occasionally, they do get completed. US 30 across Ohio from Canton to the Indiana border back in the 1970s was a series of partially completed bypasses around many of the towns and cities where one or both ends of the bypasses ended in ghost ramps or "temporary" ramps. Eventually, sometime after the turn of the century, the segments were connected and US 30 is a four line highway or freeway for this whole stretch. Just east of Canton, US 30 still has an abrupt end and is mostly two lane until the WV border.
In north-central PA, the Central Susquehanna Valley Thruway is under construction and will finally use the ghost ramps that currently exist at the north end of the US 11/15 Selinsgrove Bypass where the routes currently return to surface streets. It's been somewhere between 40 and 50 years since that short freeway stretch was completed. I grew up in that area and I honestly thought it would never be complete.
Good stuff!! Appreciate all those other ones, it’ll definitely be cool for me to look into those ones further
And you’re totally right about the pa turnpike … I was on the fence if I should include it or pick a different one … but I had just hiked it, so figured I’d throw the video clips in there 😂
I know that US Route 30 is the Lincoln Highway and goes through Dekalb Illinois and also goes through New Lennox Illinois and Joliet Illinois where in Joliet Illinois that it crosses another famous highway known as Route 66. That intersection has marker signs saying both Historic Route 30 Lincoln Highway and Historic Route 66. I know about the Joliet area since I have family who lives in the Joliet Illinois area.
You and me both, the traffic on the strip has become such a pain in the rear. When that shopping center was added adding 2 more lights just upped the ante. Something that might have worked would be to get rid of the center lane and make it 3 lanes in both directions. Taking out most of the lights and having jug handles like they do in NJ. Have a light at each end and one at the shopping center in the middle. Don't get me wrong I'm happy it's finished as I drive tractor trailer and slogging through that on a Friday is daunting. 20 minutes plus to go 2.5 miles???? I'm glad the bridge is finished crossing the river so we don't have to go through Northumberland. I grew up in Danville so I know that area reasonable well. Do you remember the old traffic circle and the old bridge before the 4 lane bridge was built??? What a nightmare!!!
I'd like to add, that the road in Centralia was not filled with dirt due to poisonous gasses. The government used that excuse to lay the dirt down. The real reason was all the accidents happening on that stretch of roads. Many deaths and injuries have occurred there because of people on UTVs and dirt bikes. So, to keep from getting sued anymore, the state filled the highway with dirt. And now 100 years of history has been lost.
In NYC there are several uncompleted highways that were never completed. The Clearview Expressway (I-295) ends abruptly at Hillside Avenue. It was supposed to go to JFK Airport. Near the JFK, where the Baisley Pond Park is today is where the interchange with the Belt Parkway and the planned Nassau Expressway (I-878) was supposed to be.
Speaking of I-878, I remember back in the late 1970s-early 1980s the maps still showed it under construction. Eastbound lanes were actually completed and for many years they served as a ramp to connect the Belt Parkway to Van Wyck Expressway (I-678) and the JFK Airport. In the 1980s 878 was extended to connect to Rockaway Boulevard to provide better access to the airport's cargo areas. In Nassau County 878 continues as a wide street with traffic lights to Atlantic Beach Bridge.
On Staten Island, for many decades there was a trumpet interchange ramps over the Staten Island Expressway. This was supposed to be the connection to the Richmond Parkway. The rich NIMBYs on Todt Hill killed the northern part of the parkway, so now it ends at Richmond Avenue. The ramps were finally demolished in 2000s or 2010s during the construction of HOV lanes on Staten Island Expressway.
On Long Island we have the Bethpage State Parkway. It was planned to start at Sunrise Highway and continue north to Woodbury. Only the part Southern State Parkway to near the Bethpage Golf Course was completed. Looking at the satellite view, however, one can trace the path of the parkway to where it would have connected with the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway, the Long Island Expressway and the Northern State Parkway. There even used to be an overpass on the LIE over the parkway's right of way, but it was demolished during the HOV lanes construction in the 1990s.
Great content! I live 5-min from The Goat Path and travel over the bridges that cross it quite often.
Me too! I've even driven on the new portion there in Greenfield. At the terminus there's a roundabout for parking and a walking/biking path as well as leading to the Greenfield Rd light. In the middle of the roundabout is a piece of art depicting goat silhouettes.
@daffers2345 I have driven the new portion several times. Just last week as I was going into the roundabout I took notice of the goats. It gave me a chuckle.
Connecticut has a really bad track record of failed highway projects. Another one is the Oak Street Connector in New Haven, which was supposed to connect the junction of Interstates 91 and 95 to Route 8 in the Lower Naugatuck Valley. In an attempt to achieve this, the city government tore down entire neighborhoods all the way to the West River and isolated The Hill neighborhood from downtown. They only completed about half a mile before canceling the project. Currently, they're paving over the only existing section of the Connector with new roads, walkways, and buildings in an effort to reconnect the city and undo past mistakes.
Connecticut is/was also guilty of having the worst highway maintenance record in the nation.
humm i ponder if someone/group controlling the purse strings has a stake in the company/companies building the roads.... better get Scooby-Doo and friends in to investigate 🙃
@buellb0y
Always thought Connecticut had a ton of tax money for infrastructure
Any idea why everything is so bad?
Corruption laziness stupidity?
Extreme high costs
“Prevailing” wage or Davis-Bacon
And yep corruption too
My family and just I traveled to Houston, which has a lot of the 4-layer "stack" interchanges that take up less land area than a traditional cloverleaf. I was thinking about what my father called "The Crazy Mixed Up Bridge" in Connecticut, not knowing it was nicknamed "The Stack" 3:55. We drove under it every year on our way up to Vermont to go camping. I always thought it was 4 layers tall because it was the hypothetical intersection of 4 highways, not knowing what it looked like from the air, and not knowing about the Stack Interchange. Fascinating! Brings back memories. Thank you.
"I was thinking about what my father called "The Crazy Mixed Up Bridge" in Connecticut, not knowing it was nicknamed "The Stack""
No, you father was thinking of the mix-master over Waterbury, CT which connects I-84 to Route 8. Its quite the spectacle.
@@guytech7310 Hey thanks for the feedback, but "The Stack" in Farmington, CT was what I personally remember, especially since the on-ramps and off-ramps all ended in gravel. The mix-master in Waterbury is fascinating because it's a "normal" interchange, bounded by a river, so all the connecting ramps had to be on one bank. But it's only 3 layers deep (two bridges tall) max.
If you want a wild satellite view of an interchange, check out Plymouth Meeting, PA (476/276) because it joins three toll roads with one free one, back in the days with human toll takers, thus they had to have a toll plaza for all the possibilities.
The “mixmaster” in Waterbury was obsolete when it opened. No shoulders, left exits, abrupt entrances, narrow, as well as cheap “double decker” design. It was recently rehabilitated so they’re likely stuck with it for several more decades.
One that I see a few times per year on my trips is the Pike Road exit "Route 108" on I-85 east of Montgomery, AL. It took 30 years of planning just to get the first phase which is a 4 mile stretch from I-85 to Vaughn Rd, it opened in 2016 and the rest of the planned bypass has stalled. Instead of a bypass for faster access from I-85 to I-65, bypassing the insanity of Montgomery traffic and the current outdated I-85/I-65 intersection, the remaining 3 phases remain stuck in red tape, the old tiny town of "Pike Road" fighting it, and land owners not willing to give up their land.
Quite familiar with #1. Frequently went into Baltimore via this as a kid and later. Down 40 from my grandparents house literally on that highway a couple miles down. First off, it’s odd, but it isn’t really nowhere. Both ends connect to regular city street US 40. It became sort of a quick short bypass so you don’t have to stop at all those intersections you see. And don’t blame the bypass highway for problems. Baltimore became a big problem increasingly after the ‘60s, everywhere just about, not simply in this area.
At least the PA. Turnpike saw actual use before it aged out. I remember going through the tunnels as a kid.
yeah, the tunnels were not large enough to support modern trucking and usage. It had to be moved.
@@nco_gets_it It was cheaper to relocate the road than to dualize the three tunnels they abandoned in the area
I don't think that that section belongs on the list. Modern construction allowed two different tunnels to be either bypassed or additional tunnels built. I remember having 4 lanes merging to 2 so we could go through a two lane tunnel. Worse in the winter when the weather was bad.
There’s also the Richmond Parkway/Korean War Veterans Memorial Parkway in Staten Island NY. The southern part was built along with a full interchange at what would have been the northern end at the Staten Island expressway, but the part that actually would have connected to the Expressway was cancelled because of environmentalist opposition, and the interchange to nowhere was removed when the SIE was widened in the 2010s.
It's also why the Willowbrook Expressway ends suddenly at Victory Boulevard/College of Staten Island (then Willowbrook State School). The expressway was supposed to run down to Hylan Boulevard (and along the west side of that college), ultimately crossing the Richmond Parkway. To fill in the gap, the West Shore Expressway was built in the 1970s; prior to that point, Richmond Avenue carried NY 440.
Elgin-O’Hare highway in Chicagoland. They’re currently working on completing the “O’Hare” end from the current end on that side (after at least 25 years) but nothing even planned for the Elgin end. When you get to the end on that side you can see right where it was planned to go as it’s a long path of empty land, but there isn’t any highway there lol.
A side note if you will, there is a short stretch of roadway in Susquehanna County Pennsylvania that runs almost parallel to Interstate 81, apparently, when the local surveyors were laying out the route, they had "off read" the maps and had "moved" the interstate right through the local state game land's and there actually was about a mile of two lane roadway built including wire guide ropes at one end before the surveyors realized their mistake and realigned the highway to where it is now, the stretch of roadway lay abandoned for almost five decades before the state game commission rebuilt the road for access to the center part of the game land for hunters within the past decade,
The infamous Amztutz at least got used for some movie scenes. Plus they repaved it about 8-10 years ago, so it's much smoother to go like hell on for 2 miles.
thank you for talking about “the stack”!
Hartford county resident here, the I-291 beltway was cancelled because the route that was planned had a lot of environmental concerns. The planned route would disturb local water and gas line infrastructure.
Another good one is i-180 in Illinois. I believe it's the country's least traveled interstate. Built to connect I-80 to a steel mill that shortly thereafter went out of business.
Hennepin, IL.
So cool to see the Goat Path on here! I live very close by and have driven on the new portion. My grandparents lived next to the graded area on Willow Road (the house is gone now).
Farther east along the Path, there's even an abandoned area where they started to build ramps and had to abandon it, and a bridge with no highway on top, just grass. It's kind if spooky, especially the abandoned ramp area.
7:25 you know you messed up when they are using your roads as a setting for the apocalypse. 🤣
The Baltimore route 40 highway to nowhere gets used a lot. If I don't have any stops, I will take that to avoid the stupid lights above it.
NJ Route 90. About 5 miles. A planned expressway for South Jersey, it connects to I-95 in Philadelphia, the Betsy Ross Bridge, and three roads in Camden and Burlington Counties.
Here in Pittsburgh we have a single quarter mile long highway road in the middle of the suburbs far away from any other highway. Seemingly they planned to build a full highway back in the 70s but only got a single quarter mile done. I practiced highway driving there when training for my license.
The infamous abandoned I-170 connector in Baltimore definitely came to my mind.
Another currently abandoned freeway is what’s now part of Bruce R Watkins Drive in Kansas City, Missouri.
There were plans convert US 71 from I-44 all the way to the downtown loop in KCMO into an interstate.
I-49 ultimately did get built from what’s now named as Three Trails Crossing (better known locally as the Grandview Triangle) to I-40 east of Fort Smith.
There are 3 at-grade traffic lights on US 71 in KCMO. There is a wide median through that stretch. That section won’t be upgraded any time soon; those lights were written into law.
71 there is among the most dangerous roads in the Kansas City area.
The top photo of the Amstutz look to be the highway scene in Groundhog Day. The Amstutz was originally to be a lakefront connection between Chicago and Milwaukee, but the much more wealthy towns to the south of Waukegan and North Chicago did want a highway through their towns. And as well all know.... money talks.
I live in Alaska and have been to Ketchikan.
To go from the airport into Ketchikan (or anywhere) you need to take the ferry between the islands. It takes about 90 seconds to cross, but there's other traffic on the water including fishing boats, pleasure boats, sea planes, and cruise ships.
Also, the runway is significantly higher than the terminal. You taxi on a pretty severe incline and the pilots have to add a bit of throttle to make it up to the runway.
Wichita Falls TX - Loop 11 is a 3 mile 6 lane road coming from nowhere going nowhere that sees maybe 10 vehicles a day but it is the smoothest road in Texas.
If you ever do a third video in these series, you might want to look at Interstate 990 outside Buffalo in New York.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll definitely look into it!
It's OK to take a break every now and then, and the beauty thing about it is, no one knows when you take one!
390, elgin ohare expressway. Built a bridge abutment and bridge for overpass to what i believe was a parking lot ,field upgraded. Didn't know much about this eway till i worked on it . Legitimately connects two hubs, but never was fully realized. Im from chicago, lifelong resident. The funny thing was asking the engineer about completion and anticipated openings. There answer was in 5-10 years. It felt like the build it ,they will come mindset and of course the build America money was there 😮
This is super interesting to me. I live near Lancaster and visit sometimes and about a year ago I noticed the beginning of the construction of the walnut street extension, but haven’t seen it until now watching this video. It instantly came to mind when I was just watching your other video about highways to nowhere lol
Some of these freeways can be used for movie sets.
I love to watch things like this. Find it really interesting plus it's a change from all the music and fitness I spend so much time in. I live in Wales and here in Britain we have 'Auto Shenanigans' channel on TH-cam. One of his series is' Secrets of the motorway' [highway] About the history and some abandoned or messy ones pop up at times.
Thanks for making this.
James.
Happy to hear you found it interesting, thanks for watching!
Great video. Need more of them!
Thanks, appreciate the kind words! More on the way, every Friday evening
I'm not surprised to see CT mentioned twice. My parents moved from CT to upstate NY when I was around 3. We would go back mutiple times a year to visit relatives and we started to notice a something, it would take CT 3-5 years to complete a road project that would take 1 year back in NY. I'm not even talking about big projects either, whatever they were doing as far as road work took forever for them to finish.
CT construction peaked in 1968. It was all downhill from there. Costs red tape NIMBY’s, a whole gamut of reasons why in general it became impossible.
@@davestewart2067 the NIMBY troops had a lot of help from the environmental people circa 1970. Many things got delayed or the budget was blown away by "impact studies" to check for endangered flora / fauna.
Great video, I am glad this showed up in my recommendations
Thanks! Glad you found it interesting!
I wondered what the Stack was when
passing Farmington,CT on I 84. 😊
You should see what Portland Oregon's once proposed freeway plans were many ghost ramps off off I-5 that once involved the 8 lane wide Mount Hood freeway through SE Portland
You also have the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway(the SOB) on Long Island originally intended to cross the Long Island Sound to Port Chester, NY, where it would connect with I-287. The bridge was never built and the 10 mile expressway(NY- 135) ends in Syosset.
#4 - All of Ozark Mountain Highroad is now signed as MO-76. The road that WAS MO-76 that goes to Branson is now MO-376.
I just use number 1 last night. it has it's uses but it is what it is. A road to Nowhere !!!
For a while, part of SR-30 (the Foothill Freeway) was a sort of highway to nowhere from I-210 to Foothill Boulevard in the Glendora area. There were proposals to extend the freeway through Upland and Fontana to connect with a freeway loop around San Bernardino, but that was not constructed until the 90s. Of course, today this section of road is anything but a "highway to nowhere", but for decades it certainly was considering its abrupt end.
You could also do one on unending projects, like the Philadelphia side of the Betsy Ross bridge. I think it was completed in the late 70's or early 80's and they're still working on the ramps to connect it to I-95.
Take a look at the Samuel Clements Highway in Elmira, New York. My dad always called it "The Highway to Nowhere." Apparently there was never a successful connection to any other main highway and now it is just a road to cross Elmira from one end to the other.
I definitely will, thanks for the suggestion!
I'm very familiar with that Stack in Connecticut. At least part of it was put to some use. On the abandoned PA Turnpike, Rays Hill tunnel was the shortest of the original seven tunnels at 0.7 miles while Sideling Hill tunnel was the longest at 1.3 miles.
There is another one in Boston. North bound rt93, on the upper deck there is a stub that veers off to the left. That was supposed to be the start of a highway that would connect to the rt3/rt95 interchange in Burlington Ma.
I-390 into O'Hare AKA the Elgin-O'Hare. Even among locals it's a mystery sometimes. Happy digging. A lot to unpack between the railroads, aviation industry, trucking industry, and local residents.Then there are utilities that want access to the stretch underground.
Awesome! I'll definitely dig into it!
I believe now that they're finally constructing I-490 around O'Hare's westside, it will actually be connection to something more than 294. Only problem with it for me is the fact both roads keep getting called western O'Hare access roads yet all they do is connect you around to the eastern access point. If they're going to build these roads they need to have an alternate entry to O'Hare.
There is one long-forgotten Highway-to-Nowhere, that was in Sacramento, California. On the north side of Sacramento, a bypass for I-80 was being constructed to replace an outdated section of U.S. 40----including a dangerously sharp turn. All but the last 500 feet of the 3-mile bypass had been completed by 1970 (including all overpasses, ramps, and a mile-plus elevated section). The final 500-ft section would have to clip a far corner of the Haggin Oaks Golf Course. The golf course refused to give-up the land, and fought the city and state in court. Finally, after nearly two decades of fighting, the state abandoned the project. The entire project was later demolished (mid 90's) and the land was turned over to Sacramento's new "light rail" project.
i love the road to nowhere because it vibes like a locked map in video games
You might also add WI 145, the Fond du Lac Freeway in Milwaukee. Originally part of Milwaukee's grandiose freeway planning in the 1960s, it was built through half of its route, and is now an underused freeway that starts at I-41 and sputters out around Capitol Drive.
But, WI !45 is in use and taking traffic. So, it's not abandoned. It's used everyday.
Great video! Here's another entry: the Tri- Borough Road Cloverleaf Interchange in Florham Park NJ, over Route24; listed as a "historical site" by google maps. It was supposed to connect to the never-completed Eisenhower Pkwy extension.
Boston has a good chunk of highways to nowhere. The southwest corridor is a fascinating story!
Appreciate the suggestion, I'll definitely do some research on it!
The goat path in Lancaster Pa. was not abandoned because of a lack of funds. It was halted by politicians who were swayed away from the project to pay favor to the Pennsylvania Dutch tourist industry. You see the extension of 23 to meet route US 30 at Gap Pa. would take traffic off business route 30, the Lincoln Highway the home of 300 motels, all you can eat buffets, and the infamous Dutch Wonderland the castle amusement park in the center of the Amish vacation paradise. (What a castle has to do with the plain farm life of the Amish is a mystery to me). The citizens who live here have to deal with the traffic nightmare of business route 30 because the tourist industry thinks that a bypass would cause them to lose a nickel to the New Yorkers looking for some good old fresh air.
Makes sense. Would've been nice to see them use the 22 million towards redoing the project instead of just making a 2 lane road for a mile. 23 and 30 are impossible to travel especially during tourist season.
Very good and informative video.
Appreciate the positive words, thanks for watching!
I was expecting Illinois ' I-180
I was living in Branson >1986-1994< when the hype for the Ozark Mountain High Road was getting started. I lived south of town in the area where the plans called for the bypass to connect with U.S. 65 south of Branson. I laughed because I knew the highway would end at the fish hatchery and Table Rock Dam as it passed around the north and west of the Branson tourism area...which is basically what it does. People who knew what was really going on were calling it the Herschend High Road back then because they knew it was going to be an expressway connecting traffic from 65 to tourism properties west of Branson which are owned by Herschend Family Entertainment company. To be honest, I believe there was no real intention of the Ozark Mountain High Road to ever have the southern half of it happen.
I don’t know exactly where it goes but there’s a highway in Rome Georgia that was made for the need for speed movie only
As soon as I saw this thumbnail I knew my city Baltimore was on it. The west side underpass as an east side boy is ridiculous
Back in 1997-98, I lived in Lubbock, Texas. There was only one interstate in Lubbock in those days, it was I-27, and it went north to connect to Amarillo (120 miles).
If you took I-27 south, and went through Lubbock, that road stopped in the middle of nowhere. Cotton fields everywhere.
It was the damnest thing you would see. The moment you passed 98th Street, on the south side of Lubbock, you saw an entire interstate stop in a cotton field! 😂😂👨🏻🦳🇺🇸
There are a number around the Sacramento area. One overpass for an unbuilt freeway is now used for a light rail train route, while the one for the opposite side of the freeway is unused. There are also offramps that were supposed to be interchanges but now just dump out onto regular streets.
Sounds like a bunch of mismanagement of funds or maybe kickbacks
Definitely mismanagement, possibly the second part!
Good stuff well made perfect timing and fits in with my urban interest good stuff my man
Thanks, really appreciate the kind words!
One good example, on Long Island, New York, is Suffolk County Route 46, also known as the William Floyd Parkway. While the road does connect to a park in the south, the north/south highway was originally created as a connection with a proposed bridge to Connecticut which was eventually rejected by Connecticut. It ends abruptly at NY State 25A.
Look at the Route 7 Connector in Connecticut it was supposed to go all the way to Danbury but wealthy people with money stopped it from going through their town
The Branson 465 highway was supposed to model I-465 in Indianapolis as a bypass.
If a truck is carrying dangerous/flammable materials, they cannot utilize I-70, which cuts through downtown Indy, and must go around.
Branson has a lot of traffic, but not the volume of that that goes about Indy.
I would put the Lake Ontario State Parkway that goes about halfway from Rochester to Niagara Falls and then just stops, On your list. So few people use it that recently they have stopped plowing it in the winter. It was supposed to connect with a similar parkway (the Robert Moses Parkway) coming from Niagara Falls but at some point maybe in the 1970s it got shelved after being half-built.
Speeds up the trip from Rochester to Lakeside State Park (when it's open).😉
Robert Moses Parkway is now "Niagara Scenic Parkway"
I work at the wastewater plant on the lakefront by the amstutz. It’s so useless it’s often chosen for movie scene shots, groundhogs day filmed on it (as shown) it was also used in dark knight, and ice harvest and a couple tv shows. I believe the idea was supposed to be a lakeside freeway straight shoot from Kenosha to Chicago and Waukegan hastily built it and the rest of the surrounding towns/cities were just like “nah.”
I-380 in CA was never completed and has abandoned overpasses that dead end.
Cool video. I live in lancaster pa so the goat path with its ghost bridges and ramps always fascinates me. I also been on the new extention a few times which seems almost pointless. In fact it looks like they use it more as a dragway with all the tire marks. I also been to the abandoned turnpike many times. And also PA 61 in centrailia which was not mentioned before they covered it in dirt piles.
In Guntersville, Alabama there's Monsanto Rd. A 2.5 mile 4 lane divided highway that connects a 2 lane road to a dead-end.
Love the content! Please keep at it and keep upping your editing game!
Thanks! And it’s definitely a work in progress as you can see, but the last month or so I’ve started to make a real effort to learn the editing side of things … so hopefully it will only get better from here on!
We had a small section of highway completed on Staten Island that was never used. It sat for decades and kids would go up there to get drunk. They finally demolished it.
Wow, the description of #1 could apply equally to I-375 in Detroit.
It'd be nice to highlight the roads on a map as you name them!
The rt40 segment, while not technically a highway to nowhere, as it is still in use and many people use it, is very out of place compared to the rest of 40. Most of the Balto section of 40 is at-grade, slow, filled with stoplights and businesses and housing and it's a regular inter-city road.
But then there's this section of lowered highway-style pavement that just looks off and feels weird and I guess now I know why.
Supposedly there's plans to put the new RedLine in there between the sides of the street but there's enough other things there that it could prove to be too expensive
7:20 The abandoned Laurel Hill tunnel on the PA Turnpike has been used by Chip Ganassi Racing for wind tunnel testing by both IndyCar and NASCAR teams. No wind, no rain, perfectly repeatable real-world conditions, with no worries about the effects of the moving floor in a traditional test facility.
Very cool stuff!
I think it is Schaumburg, Illinois. What do you think of Elgin-O'Hare Exspressway? In a another video, the person felf an exspessway near Quincy, Illinois is silly. what do you think?
I don't understand the Amstutz Expressway. I looked at it on a map and there are cars traveling on it. It has several exist, and an end and beginning that are accessible. I also don't get the one in Baltimore.
What part of it doesn't make sense to you?
@BuildingTales The road does go somewhere...
There’s also a part of the PA-23 ghost highway in Norristown, PA. Not much of it built though, just a little stub after an intersection with US-202
The amstutz highway was used for a movie back in the early 2010s, Now, it is a small highway that will take you between waukegan and some other place. I live in waukegan so i know all about this.
The Amstutz Expressway was also used in the filming of The Blues Brothers and Groundhog Day…
I remember going under a double decker bridge in central Illinois that lead to nowhere. They built the bridges in the early 80s for an expressway that wasn't built until the 90s I believe.
The section of North Second Street between Rockford Illinois and Loves Park Illinois was part of an never finished highway project hence it having ramps and overpasses / underpasses in some sections and some streets connect to it. Also two road bridges over the Rock River via ramps ( Whitman Street and Auburn Street / Spring Creek Road ) Also the former CN&W ( UP) Chicago to Janesville Wisconsin line crosses Auburn Street / Spring Creek Road also the connecting ramps to North Second Street then into Loves Park the tracks make an curve crossing North Second Street.
There is the original I-40 through Memphis. Also a unused I-755 in St. Louis, the stub ramps are gone now when a soccer stadium was built. Shreveport may end up having a highway to nowhere where ghost ramps are a permanent feature for I-49. It depends if they build that connector or not.
Another "highway to nowhere" is the planned extension of New Jersey 18, which ends at exit 6 in Wall Township. Originally planned to continue south from NJ 138 to Point Pleasant (5 1/2 miles south), political issues - namely its proximity to land owned by an influential politician who didn't want it disturbing his plans for developing his property - caused the cancellation of the remaining distance. And while the highway as it exists is still very useful from 138 all the way to New Brunswick (divided expressway from Wall to exit 30 and then non-expressway north until its termination at I-287 in Piscataway) it would have helped significantly reduce traffic south of Wall headed to the beach south of Belmar, instead of forcing it all onto the badly overcrowded route 35.
Hadn't heard of that one before, appreciate the suggestion!