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Decommissioned highway


A decommissioned highway is a highway that has been removed from service, has been shut down, or has had its authorization as a national, provincial or state highway removed. Decommissioning can include the complete or partial demolition or abandonment of an old highway structure because the old roadway has lost its utility, but such is not always the norm. Where the old highway has continuing value, it likely remains as a local road offering access to properties denied access to the new road or for use by slow vehicles such as farm equipment and horse-drawn vehicles denied use of the newer highway.

Decommissioning can also include the removal of one or more of the multiple designations of a single segment of highway. As an example, what remains as U.S. Route 60 (US 60) between Wickenburg, Arizona and Phoenix, Arizona carried the routes of three US highways (US 60, US 70, US 89) and one state highway (Arizona State Route 93). The highway remains a federal highway, but with fewer designations.

Decommissioned highways are common in the United States. Even in the early years of the United States Highway System, some highways had short lives as US highways especially if they were themselves short routes, such as the early US 110 in Wisconsin. Extensions of US routes have implied the elimination of earlier designations; as US 6, which originally went no farther west than the Hudson River in New York was extended to Long Beach, California over routes that included an old Indiana State Route 6, most of an old US 32 between Chicago and Omaha, all of US 38 between Omaha and Denver, and an old California State Highway 7 mostly in the Mojave Desert. US 6 was itself pared back to Bishop, California in the Great Renumbering of California in 1964.


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