State Roads in Florida

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Standard (left) and toll (right) State Road shields
State: State Road X (SR X)
Interstates: Interstate X (I-X)
US Routes: U.S. Highway X (US X)
Notes: State Roads are generally state-maintained.
The two kinds of State Road shield that are currently used
The two kinds of State Road shield that are currently used
An older State Road 471 shield, with a design used until around 1980. Note that the current design lacks the Florida Keys.
An older State Road 471 shield, with a design used until around 1980. Note that the current design lacks the Florida Keys.

Roads maintained by the Florida Department of Transportation or a toll authority are referred to officially as State Roads, abbreviated SR. State Roads are always numbered; in general, the numbers follow a grid. Odd numbered roads run north-south, and even numbered roads run east-west. One- and two-digit numbers run in order from 2 in the north to 94 in the south, and A1A (formerly 1) in the east to 97 in the west (99 used to exist but is now a county road). The major cross-state roads end in 0 and 5.

Most routes of the form X00 are major diagonal routes; an even first digit indicates a southwest-to-northeast direction, and an odd first digit indicates a northwest-to-southeast direction.

Other three-digit numbers are placed in horizontal bands based on the first digit:

1 north of 10
2 between 10 and 20
3 between 20 and 40
4 between 40 and 50
5 between 50 and 60
6 between 60 and 70
7 between 70 and 80
8 between 80 and 90
9 south of 90

Three-digit numbers increase from east to west across the band; 30 is skipped because it runs along the Gulf Coast in the panhandle and doesn't go all the way across the state.

When the grid was first laid out in 1945, the rules were almost perfectly followed. However, over the years, as routes have been added, there has not always been room to follow the grid. Even given this, some placements, such as 112 (in the 8 band), 752 (in the 2 band), and 602 (in the 1 band) seem to defy reason. The Pensacola area has a collection of these "misplaced" street numbers. When FDOT added route numbers to a collection of Miami-Dade County streets in 1980, most of them received 9## designations regardless of the band that they occupied.

Every section of U.S. Highway and Interstate Highway has a State Road number assigned to it, usually unsigned (for example, Interstate 4 is also unsigned SR 400). In addition to some named toll roads (for example, 91 and 821, which make up Florida's Turnpike) some minor State Roads are also unsigned (like SR 913 and SR 5054).

Contents

[edit] History

Old State Road 18 shield, modified when the road was given to the county.
Old State Road 18 shield, modified when the road was given to the county.
Old Secondary State Road ("SR S-367") sign in Shell Point.
Old Secondary State Road ("SR S-367") sign in Shell Point.

Prior to the 1945 renumbering, State Roads were given numbers in the order they were added to the system. The 1945 renumbering removed a lot of roads that had never been built and added some that had not existed prior to 1945.

Until the early 1980s, the Florida Department of Transportation continued to add State Roads to the system. At some point, they began to classify roads into primary, secondary, and local roads. Primary roads would continue to be state-maintained. Secondary roads would have an S before the number, and would only be state-maintained during a construction project. Local roads would be completely removed from the system.

In 1977, FDOT changed the division of roads into state/county/local. Most secondary routes and some primary routes were given to the counties, and occasionally a new state road was taken over; some main roads in incorporated areas were given to the localities.

The secondary signs had the S changed to C (for county) and a small COUNTY sticker added to the bottom. As signs grew old, they were replaced with the standard MUTCD county road pentagon. While this occurred throughout the State of Florida, the part of the state south of SR 70 was hit particularly hard by the transition from State to County control and maintenance.

In the early 1980s several state roads were renumbered; in the latter half of the 1990s, budget cuts and other factors prompted a series of truncations of several state roads, primarily in urban areas and the Space Coast and the Treasure Coast. The trend seems to have been reversed since 2002 as new state road designations have been added as a result of construction of new highways, most notably in the Jacksonville, Orlando, and the Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan areas.

[edit] "Interrupted" State Roads

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While most State Roads are contiguous, there is a relative handful of routes that have interruptions in their designations.

  • State Road 2 has two sections separated by the State of Georgia. The western segment extends westward from Georgia 91 as it crosses the Chattahoochee River and has its western terminus at SR 81 near Sweet Gum Head; the eastern segment crosses the Okefenokee Swamp to connect separated segments of Georgia 94.
  • State Road 15 has two sections bridged by County Road 15 and US 192/441. With the exception of a small section in the Orlando area, SR 15 is unsigned for the entire route as it is a secret FDOT designation for US 441 south of Holopaw, US 17 between Orlando and Jacksonville, and US 1/23 north of Jacksonville.
  • Four separate sections are designated SR 30A: two bypasses west of Panama City, US 98 in the cities of Panama City and Callaway, and a spur to the west of Apalachicola that was once a loop. Only two of the four sections are signed SR 30A.
  • State Road 78 spanned southwestern Florida from the northern tip of Lake Okeechobee to US 41 on the Gulf Coast, but in the late 1970s, FDOT slapped an S-prefix on the designation of the section between SR 29 and SR 31... and started a process that converted the segment into County Road 78 connecting the remaining pieces of SR 78.
  • Until 1993, State Road 84 traversed the state from Atlantic coast to Gulf coast. When an upgraded Alligator Alley became part of Interstate 75, the unsigned FDOT designation of SR 93 was applied to the toll road, and the end pieces of SR 84 retained their number - and their signage. SR 84 is also a pair of frontage roads that run parallel to I-75 and I-595 from the West Arvida Parkway exit to just west of Florida's Turnpike, with a short gap before the eastern end piece emerges from I-595 as its own road east of US 441.
  • In the Jacksonville area, SR 115 travels along Southside Boulevard north from US 1, then follows a pair of Alternate U.S. Highways, 1 and 90 to Interstate 95 (hidden SR 9), where the southern segment of SR 115 ends. Three miles to the north on I-95 is a second section of SR 115, extending to US 1-23 near Callahan.
  • At one time, SR 865 extended from Estero Island (near Fort Myers Beach) to Tice. Today SR 865 consists of two separate sections (one north-south, the other east-west) connected by a stretch of County Road that was originally part of SR 865.
  • State Road 909, also known as West Dixie Highway to the residents of North Miami, has a two-block-long hiatus, where drivers are greeted with "TO West Dixie Hwy/TO 909" signs as they drive a short stretch of Northeast 125th Street (SR 922) connecting the pieces.

It can be argued that SR 9A could be considered another "interrupted" Florida state route, with one unsigned section in the Miami area (Interstate 95 south of the Golden Glades Interchange) and a separate, nearly complete, loop in the Jacksonville area (as SR 9A and Interstate 295 - the entire circuit will be signed I-295 when the last section is completed in 2006; however, there are still two separate sections of SR 9A in Jacksonville for the time being).

  • Similarly, there are three sections of road that FDOT has designated SR 10A: bypasses of Pensacola and Lake City and a short connection to the Arlington Expressway in Jacksonville. Only the Lake City bypass is signed SR 10A (the Pensacola bypass is signed US 90; the Arlington Expressway connection is unsigned).

[edit] See also

Interstate Highways A list of interstate highways within Florida.
U.S. Highways A list of U.S. highways within Florida.
State Roads A list of all state roads within Florida.
Toll Roads A list of toll roads within Florida.
U.S. Roads Portal

[edit] External links

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