George Andrews Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Any Highway with a
> current U.S. designation ( U.S. 101, U.S. 97, U.S.
> 395 as examples ), receives Federal Highway Trust
> Fund dollars for at least part of its upkeep &
> improvements.

I'm not sure about California, but having a "U.S." designation means absolutely NOTHING to the federal government. The "U.S." highway system isn't even endorsed by the Department of Transportation or its predecessors, it was invented by a group called the "American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials" (AASHTO). Basically it's like a "trade group" of sorts for the various state transportation directors.

While the USDOT does look to the AASHTO for a lot of support and guidance, the AASHTO is **NOT** the DOT.

The Federal Government has a program called the National Highway System, which indicates which roads are "federal-aid" highways, meaning that they are eligible for federal operating funding. In general all Interstate highways (which are official USDOT designations) are part of the NHS, but even so there are exceptions (I-238 in California is the most popular exception, it's considered a "non-chargable Interstate" and is basically an Interstate Highway in name only.) It is this law that allows Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico to have Interstate Highways (although only Hawaii signs their Interstates as such; Alaska and Puerto Rico do not sign their Interstate Highways as such.) Each of the three states (or commonwealth) is permitted to designate three highways as "Interstate" highways, and get the funding benefits of such (in which case the federal government picks up a substantial portion of the operations & maintenance costs of the road, more so than a non-Interstate NHS route.)

So, there are "state highways" that can legally be NHS component roads. In fact there are even city streets and county roads that are NHS component roads. There are U.S. Highways that are **NOT** NHS highways. (An example is U.S. 2 between Kalispell and Columbia Falls, Montana - the NHS route is U.S. 93 north to Whitefish, then east on MT 40 to Columbia Falls to rejoin U.S. 2. Parts of U.S. 20 in Oregon (between Corvallis and the junction with Oregon 126 west of Bend) is also not part of the NHS system. Nor is any part of U.S. 730 or U.S. 197, or large parts of U.S. 12 in Montana.

In California, routes like SR 89 and SR 44 east of Redding and Dunsmuir are designated NHS routes. In Oregon, virtually all of the routes from I-5 to the Oregon Coast are NHS routes (U.S. 30, U.S. 26, Oregon 18, U.S. 20 (west of Corvallis only), OR 126, OR 38, OR 42 (STRAHNET designated)) leaving only OR 6, OR 22 and OR 36 not on the NHS map.) Frankly, it would not surprise me if someday that those three U.S. routes would lose their U.S. designation (U.S. 26 has already been truncated from Astoria to the junction with U.S. 101.) - Neither U.S. 26 nor U.S. 30 even have a through route through Portland, and through traffic on U.S. 20 between Lebanon and Corvallis is actually redirected to the paralelling OR 34 which bypasses Albany.

Technically speaking, U.S. 101 for its entire length is actually not a "National Highway System" component road, it's a STRAHNET component road which is a Department of Defense designation; however the NHS includes all STRAHNET roads.

[www.fhwa.dot.gov]

In general, the official policy is that the U.S. Highway system should be de-emphasized, which is why many states like Oregon and California have largely retired the U.S. highway shields in those states - except for certain interstate routes like U.S. 97.