Standard (left) and toll (right) State Road shields |
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| System information | |
|---|---|
| Notes: | State Roads are generally state-maintained. |
| Highway names | |
| Interstates: | Interstate X (I-X) |
| US Routes: | U.S. Highway X (US X) |
| State: | State Road X (SR X) |
| System links | |
| Florida State and County Roads Interstate • US • SR (Pre-1945) • Toll • County |
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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. Placements such as 112 (in the 8 band), 752 (in the 2 band), and 602 (in the 1 band) are the most notable violations of the grid system. 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).
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Prior to the 1945 renumbering, State Roads were given numbers in the order they were added to the system. The 1945 renumbering removed many roads that were never built and added some that had not existed prior to 1945.
In 1955, the Florida Department of Transportation slowed down the addition of new state roads and began to classify roads into primary, secondary, and local roads. Primary roads would continue to be state-maintained, while 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 roads and some primary roads 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.
While most State Roads are contiguous, there is a relative handful of routes that have interruptions in their designations.