North Carolina Highway System

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The North Carolina Highway System consists of a vast network of Interstate highways, U.S. routes, and state routes. North Carolina has the second largest state maintained highway network in the United States.[1]

Contents

[edit] Interstate highways

Interstate highways that venture through the state of North Carolina, along with auxillarly routes:

[edit] U.S. Routes

[edit] Current routes

[edit] Former routes

[edit] North Carolina State Routes

A typical North Carolina Highway shield.
A typical North Carolina Highway shield.

[edit] Numbering

North Carolina State Highways numbered under 1000 are primary state highways,[2] and numbers greater than or equal to 1000 are secondary. Secondary highways are not signed with shields; regular green or white road signs are most commonly used to designate secondary roads. On these signs, the prefix "SR" for "secondary road" sometimes precedes the road number. Nearly all secondary highways also have phoenetic names, and many primary routes are also signed with phoenetic titles. North Carolina routes may be referred to as "North Carolina Highway x", "N.C. Highway x", "NC Route x", or just "NC x", where x is the route number.

Unlike highways in the primary system, secondary road numbers may be repeated multiple times throughout the system, provided that they are not repeated within the same county. For example, SR2000 may refer to the physical roadway signed as Wake Forest Road or Falls of Neuse Road in Wake County, or it may refer to the physical roadway signed as Hickory Grove Road in Gaston County. Some road numbers are quite common. In fact, the designation SR1101 is currently used, or has in the past, been used nearly 100 times by almost every county in the state.

Secondary roads that cross a county line are generally given a new number in the new county. For example, Rustic Court is a very short road, barely one tenth of a mile in length; yet, it crosses the Durham-Orange county line. The section in Durham County (0.03 miles in length) is designated SR2397 while the section is Orange County (0.08 miles in length) is designated SR1604. The exception to this rule applies to roads designated SR10xx (where the x's represent additional digits) which are generally given to regionally significant roads or roads crossing one or more county lines, but which are not part of the primary system. For example, SR1006-Old Stage Road, is located both in Wake and Harnett Counties.

The significance of secondary road numbers is almost exclusive to NCDOT operations, generally maintenance, rather than for navigational purposes by the driving public. Certainly, the secondary road numbering system is not organized to help unfamiliar motorists find their way. Rather, this is the job of the phoenetic names, which are generally established at the local level, but which often share a sign with an SR designation for convienence. In many rural areas of the state, typically in the Mountian and Coastal Plain regions, many roads lack a phoenetic name, in which case they are known by the SR designation.

It is not uncommon for maintenance responsibility of secondary roads to transfer from NCDOT to particular municipalities as they increase in size due to annexation. When this occurs, the SR designations are eliminated. The SR road designation is also eliminated from physical roadways that are elevated into the primary system. For example, NC 157 (Guess Road) in Durham and Person counties was once a secondary road designated SR1008. Although it ascended into the primary system years ago, some of the old signs identifying Guess Road as SR1008 remain.

[edit] Signage

A North Carolina Highway shield has the route's number in black inside a white equilateral diamond shape. A square of black surrounds the diamond shape. The diamond shape does not alter to accommodate larger route numbers; the numbers are reduced in size to fit within the diamond.

[edit] Rules and exceptions

  • North Carolina Highway numbers cannot be the same as any U.S. Highway or Interstate Highway in the state. If a new federal route is commissioned in North Carolina that has the same number as a North Carolina Highway, the NC route number more than likely will be changed. (Current only exception: NC 73)
  • There are no alphabetic letters in a state route designation, nor any alternate routes in the system, except for NC 226A.

[edit] List of NC Highways

[edit] NC 2 through NC 50

[edit] NC 51 through NC 100

[edit] NC 101 through NC 150

[edit] NC 151 through NC 200

  • North Carolina Highway 179
  • North Carolina Highway 180
  • North Carolina Highway 181
  • North Carolina Highway 182
  • North Carolina Highway 183
  • North Carolina Highway 184
  • North Carolina Highway 186
  • North Carolina Highway 191
  • North Carolina Highway 194
  • North Carolina Highway 197
  • North Carolina Highway 198
  • North Carolina Highway 200

[edit] NC 205 through NC 242

  • North Carolina Highway 216
  • North Carolina Highway 217
  • North Carolina Highway 218
  • North Carolina Highway 222
  • North Carolina Highway 225
  • North Carolina Highway 226
  • North Carolina Highway 226A
  • North Carolina Highway 231
  • North Carolina Highway 241
  • North Carolina Highway 242

[edit] NC 251 through NC 294

  • North Carolina Highway 251
  • North Carolina Highway 261
  • North Carolina Highway 268
  • North Carolina Highway 273
  • North Carolina Highway 274
  • North Carolina Highway 275
  • North Carolina Highway 279
  • North Carolina Highway 280
  • North Carolina Highway 281
  • North Carolina Highway 294

[edit] NC 304 through NC 481

  • North Carolina Highway 304
  • North Carolina Highway 305
  • North Carolina Highway 306
  • North Carolina Highway 307
  • North Carolina Highway 308
  • North Carolina Highway 343
  • North Carolina Highway 345
  • North Carolina Highway 381
  • North Carolina Highway 400
  • North Carolina Highway 403
  • North Carolina Highway 410
  • North Carolina Highway 411
  • North Carolina Highway 461
  • North Carolina Highway 481

[edit] NC 522 through NC 694

[edit] NC 700 through NC 905

  • North Carolina Highway 770
  • North Carolina Highway 772
  • North Carolina Highway 801
  • North Carolina Highway 901
  • North Carolina Highway 902
  • North Carolina Highway 903
  • North Carolina Highway 904
  • North Carolina Highway 905

[edit] Former routes

  • North Carolina Highway 10A
  • North Carolina Highway 13
  • North Carolina Highway 15
  • North Carolina Highway 17
  • North Carolina Highway 19
  • North Carolina Highway 21
  • North Carolina Highway 23
  • North Carolina Highway 25
  • North Carolina Highway 25A
  • North Carolina Highway 29
  • North Carolina Highway 31
  • North Carolina Highway 36
  • North Carolina Highway 40
  • North Carolina Highway 44
  • North Carolina Highway 49A
  • North Carolina Highway 62A
  • North Carolina Highway 64
  • North Carolina Highway 70
  • North Carolina Highway 74
  • North Carolina Highway 77
  • North Carolina Highway 85
  • North Carolina Highway 95
  • North Carolina Highway 95A
  • North Carolina Highway 105A
  • North Carolina Highway 107E
  • North Carolina Highway 117
  • North Carolina Highway 155
  • North Carolina Highway 162
  • North Carolina Highway 170
  • North Carolina Highway 176
  • North Carolina Highway 190
  • North Carolina Highway 192
  • North Carolina Highway 195
  • North Carolina Highway 206
  • North Carolina Highway 220
  • North Carolina Highway 242A
  • North Carolina Highway 260
  • North Carolina Highway 262
  • North Carolina Highway 264
  • North Carolina Highway 271
  • North Carolina Highway 272
  • North Carolina Highway 276
  • North Carolina Highway 277
  • North Carolina Highway 282
  • North Carolina Highway 283
  • North Carolina Highway 284
  • North Carolina Highway 285
  • North Carolina Highway 286
  • North Carolina Highway 287
  • North Carolina Highway 288
  • North Carolina Highway 289
  • North Carolina Highway 292
  • North Carolina Highway 293
  • North Carolina Highway 301
  • North Carolina Highway 302
  • North Carolina Highway 303
  • North Carolina Highway 311
  • North Carolina Highway 321
  • North Carolina Highway 341
  • North Carolina Highway 342
  • North Carolina Highway 344
  • North Carolina Highway 350
  • North Carolina Highway 401
  • North Carolina Highway 402
  • North Carolina Highway 422
  • North Carolina Highway 482
  • North Carolina Highway 485
  • North Carolina Highway 500
  • North Carolina Highway 501
  • North Carolina Highway 512
  • North Carolina Highway 515
  • North Carolina Highway 562
  • North Carolina Highway 601
  • North Carolina Highway 602
  • North Carolina Highway 603
  • North Carolina Highway 605
  • North Carolina Highway 630
  • North Carolina Highway 661
  • North Carolina Highway 681
  • North Carolina Highway 691
  • North Carolina Highway 692
  • North Carolina Highway 693
  • North Carolina Highway 695
  • North Carolina Highway 701
  • North Carolina Highway 702
  • North Carolina Highway 703
  • North Carolina Highway 708
  • North Carolina Highway 709
  • North Carolina Highway 721
  • North Carolina Highway 741
  • North Carolina Highway 752
  • North Carolina Highway 761
  • North Carolina Highway 800
  • North Carolina Highway 802
  • North Carolina Highway 803
  • North Carolina Highway 891
  • North Carolina Highway 892
  • North Carolina Highway 893
  • North Carolina Highway 897

[edit] Bike routes

[edit] Other routes and highways

[edit] Trivia

The old NC highway shield design.
The old NC highway shield design.
  • NC 400 is the shortest state route in North Carolina with a length of approximately 0.8 miles.
  • North Carolina State Route shields used to feature an interlocking "NC" logo above the route number; this symbol is currently used by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (slightly altered).
  • Michigan is the only U.S. state other than North Carolina that uses the diamond shape for route shields.
  • When U.S. Highway 74 is upgraded to Interstate standards in southeastern North Carolina, it will carry Interstate 74, forming one of only a few concurrencies in the nation where a U.S. Route and an Interstate share the same number.

[edit] History

The original highway numbering system for North Carolina was established in the 1920s. Major routes were multiples of 10, with 10, 20, and 90 running east/west, 30, 40, 50, 70, and 80 running north/south, and 60 running as a diagonal route. These cross-state routes were used as a basis for numbering the two-digit roads that served as the major city-city connectors. For example, NC 90 used to run along modern U.S. 64, which explains the multiple "90s" that branch off of U.S. 64 today (NC 96, 97, and 98)

Three-digit numbered roads were less important spurs off of the two-digit roads and often served as rural connectors. These were numbered in a scheme opposite of the U.S. and Interstate auxiliary routes; the spur routes received an extra "ones" digit instead of an extra "hundreds" digit. The first spur received the number "xx1" and the second received "xx2", where xx is the parent route number. This explains the predomination of such routes as 751, 271, 561, and the relatively few "xx0" routes (which would be the 10th assigned spur route... few parent routes would have spurs numbered this high).

In 1933-34 many roads were renumbered to eliminate conflicts with the U.S. highways now crisscrossing the state. Some numbers (50, 90), which had become effectively U.S. routes (1 and 64 respectively) were moved or eliminated while others that conflicted with established U.S. route numbers in the state were changed to non-conflicting numbers. This seems to have been done without regard to the earlier numbering system, as were all future additions to the state highway system, which is where the modern "lack of any system" system came to be.

In 1937, several routes were renumbered to be contiguous with South Carolina routes, and in 1940 the same happened with Virginia. No effort has ever been made to match up with Tennessee routes, but most cross-border numbered roads along this area are already U.S. highways anyway.

In the 1950s, routes that conflicted with Interstates were renumbered.

The most recent numbering change happened in 2002. Recently, NC 136 and NC 3 swapped numbers. This was to place NC 3 near Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s home of Kannapolis. The old NC 3/current NC 136 is a short spur in Currituck County. Currently, the only North Carolina highway in conflict with an Interstate number in the state is NC 73.[3]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ NC DOT. NCDOT Quick Facts (PDF). Retrieved on December 18, 2006.
  2. ^ State of North Carolina (1998-08-01). North Carolina Administrative Code Chapter 19A: Transportation. North Carolina Administrative Code. Retrieved on December 18, 2006.
  3. ^ NC Roads: North Carolina Highway Numbering Scheme. Retrieved on April 9, 2007.

[edit] External links

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