A
spur route is a short
roadA road is an identifiable route, way or path between places.
forming a branch from a longer, more important route (typically a major road,
freewayA freeway is a type of road designed for safer high-speed operation of motor vehicles through the elimination of at-grade intersections. This is accomplished by preventing access to and from adjacent properties and eliminating all cross traffic through the use of grade separations and...
, Interstate Highway or
motorwayThe OECD has defined a motorway as:Motorways are identical to freeways as a road type, and comparable to the United States's Interstate Highways as a classification....
). A bypass or
beltwayA beltway, loop , ring road, or orbital motorway is a circumferential highway found around or within many cities....
is never considered a true spur route as it typically reconnects with the major road. Both loops and spurs can be forms of special route.
In the province of Ontario, most spur routes are designated as A or B, such as Highway 17A, or 7B.
A
spur route is a short
roadA road is an identifiable route, way or path between places.
forming a branch from a longer, more important route (typically a major road,
freewayA freeway is a type of road designed for safer high-speed operation of motor vehicles through the elimination of at-grade intersections. This is accomplished by preventing access to and from adjacent properties and eliminating all cross traffic through the use of grade separations and...
, Interstate Highway or
motorwayThe OECD has defined a motorway as:Motorways are identical to freeways as a road type, and comparable to the United States's Interstate Highways as a classification....
). A bypass or
beltwayA beltway, loop , ring road, or orbital motorway is a circumferential highway found around or within many cities....
is never considered a true spur route as it typically reconnects with the major road. Both loops and spurs can be forms of special route.
Ontario
In the province of Ontario, most spur routes are designated as A or B, such as Highway 17A, or 7B. A stands for "Alternate Route", and usually links a highway to a town's central core or main attraction, while B stands for "Business Route" or "Bypass", but are used when a main highway is routed around a town and away from its former alignment. The designation of "C" was used twice (Highway 3C, and 40C), and is assumed to mean "Connector". Both highways have long since been retired and are now county roads. There was also one road with the D designation (Highway 8D, later the original Highway 102), and this may have stood for "Diversion", as it was along the first completed
divided highwayDivided Highway is a compilation album by American rock band The Doobie Brothers, released in 2003. . All tracks are taken from the albums Cycles and Brotherhood .-Track listing:...
in
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
at the time (
Cootes DriveFormerly known as the "Dundas Diversion", Cootes Drive is a city street in Dundas, Ontario, Canada . Its path leads from Main Street West , past McMaster University, through Cootes Paradise to Dundas, where it feeds into King Street...
in
HamiltonHamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...
).
United States
In the US, many Interstate Highways have spur routes when they enter a large metropolitan area. Interstate spur routes are numbered with a three-digit number. The last two digits of the number are the number of the "parent" Interstate; e.g. a spur route of
Interstate 90Interstate 90 is the longest Interstate Highway in the United States at . It is the northernmost coast-to-coast interstate, and parallels U.S. Route 20 for the most part. Its western terminus is in Seattle, Washington, at 4th Avenue S. next to Safeco Field and Qwest Field, and its eastern terminus...
could be 990, a spur route of
Interstate 5Interstate 5 is the main Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, paralleling the Pacific Ocean from Canada to Mexico and serving some of the largest cities of that part of the U.S., including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco/Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Diego...
could be 105.
Spur Interstate routes have three-digit numbers with an odd first digit. A subsidiary route either passing through a city or bypassing it and then reconnecting to a major highway would receive an even first digit, and be considered a loop rather than a spur. For example, in the case of
Interstate 5Interstate 5 is the main Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, paralleling the Pacific Ocean from Canada to Mexico and serving some of the largest cities of that part of the U.S., including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco/Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Diego...
,
Interstate 105Interstate 105 is an Interstate Highway in southern Los Angeles County, California that runs east-west from near the Los Angeles International Airport to Norwalk...
is a spur route ending at
Los Angeles International AirportLos Angeles International Airport is the primary airport serving Los Angeles, California, the second-most populated metropolitan area of the United States. It is often referred to by its airport code LAX, with the letters usually pronounced individually...
.
Spurs are also found branching from US highways,
state routesState highway, state road or state route can refer to one of three related concepts, two of them related to a state government in a country that is divided into states :...
, etc., often as extended onramps and offramps of
expresswayAn expressway is a divided highway for high-speed traffic with at least partial control of access. The degree of access allowed varies between countries and even between regions within the same country. In some jurisdictions, expressways are divided arterial roads with limits on the frequency of...
s.
There are many numbering violations in the spur route numbering system, thus the general rules above do not always apply.
United Kingdom
In the
UKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
, a spur route carries the same definition, but the rules for numbering it differ.
Same-number spurs
Short spurs from primary roads or motorways typically are not given a unique number, and three arms of the junction will apparently have the same number. For example, the A14 has a same-number spur to the A1(M) motorway at
HuntingdonHuntingdon is a market town in the county of Cambridgeshire in East Anglia, England. The town was chartered by King John in 1205. It was formerly the county town of Huntingdonshire, and is currently the seat of the Huntingdonshire district council...
in
CambridgeshireCambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...
, the
M23 motorwayThe M23 motorway is a motorway in England. The motorway runs from south of Hooley in Surrey, where it splits from the A23, to Pease Pottage, south of Crawley in West Sussex where it rejoins the A23. The northern end of the motorway starts at junction 7 on what is effectively a two-mile long spur...
has one to Gatwick Airport in
West SussexWest Sussex is a county in the south of England, bordering onto East Sussex , Hampshire and Surrey. The county of Sussex has been divided into East and West since the 12th century, and obtained separate county councils in 1888, but it remained a single ceremonial county until 1974 and the coming...
and the
M25The M25 motorway is a 117 mile orbital motorway which encircles Greater London, United Kingdom except for the tolled Dartford Crossing where it crosses the River Thames to the east of London...
has one to Heathrow Airport. To distinguish the spur on road signs, the road it leads to is usually given - for example "Gatwick Airport (
A23The A23 road is a major road in the United Kingdom between London and Brighton, East Sussex. It became an arterial route following the construction of Westminster Bridge in 1750 and the consequent improvement of roads leading to the bridge south of the river by the Turnpike Trusts...
)".
Unique-number spurs
Typically, slightly longer spurs, or those with intermediate junctions of their own, are given unique numbers to distinguish them from their parent road. There is a loose numbering system for these spurs on the motorway network, not dissimilar to the US system – the road takes a three-digit number derived from that of the parent road. Examples include the
M602 motorwayThe M602 motorway is a relatively short motorway, leading traffic into Manchester and Salford by-passing the suburban town of Eccles.The motorway itself was meant to be a part of a bigger scheme, the South Lancashire Motorway...
(spur of the
M60The M60 motorway is an orbital motorway circling Greater Manchester, a metropolitan county in North West England. It passes through all Greater Manchester's metropolitan boroughs except for Wigan and Bolton. Most of the City of Manchester is encompassed within the motorway, except for the...
and
M62The M62 motorway is a west–east trans-Pennine motorway in northern England, connecting the cities of Liverpool and Hull via Manchester and Leeds. The road also forms part of the unsigned Euroroutes E20 and E22...
motorways),
M621 motorwayThe M621 motorway is a short motorway in England. It takes traffic from the M1 and M62 motorways into Central Leeds. It was extended to encompass a section of the M1 south of Leeds, when the M1-A1 link or South East Leeds Orbital opened in 2000...
(spur of the
M62The M62 motorway is a west–east trans-Pennine motorway in northern England, connecting the cities of Liverpool and Hull via Manchester and Leeds. The road also forms part of the unsigned Euroroutes E20 and E22...
and
M1The M1 is a major north–south motorway in England primarily connecting London to Leeds, where it joins the A1 near Aberford. While the M1 is considered to be the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the United Kingdom, the first road to be built to motorway standard in the country was the...
motorways), and
M271 motorwayThe M271 is a motorway near Southampton in Hampshire, England. It is 3 miles long. Construction began in 1973 and it opened in 1975. It provides part of the route to Southampton Docks from the M27.-Route:...
(spur of the
M27 motorwayThe M27 is a motorway in Hampshire, England. It is 25 miles long and runs west-east from Cadnam to Portsmouth. It was opened in stages between 1975 and 1983, and there were plans to extend the motorway as far as Penzance to the west and Ramsgate to the east, with a number of smaller motorways...
). There are anomalous spur numbers though, for instance the
M898 motorwayThe M898 motorway is a 1/2 mile motorway in Renfrewshire, Scotland. It is a spur route from the M8 motorway towards the Erskine Bridge. It is the highest numbered motorway in the United Kingdom, and the shortest at just a half-mile long. It also lacks hard shoulders along its length...
(spur of the M8 motorway; number given to match with a unique A-number road) and the unique case of the
M181 motorwayThe M181 motorway links the town of Scunthorpe, England to the M180 motorway. Basically a spur of the M180, the road is virtually straight through its entire 2 mile length...
, a spur of a spur.
A-roadThe Great Britain road numbering scheme is a numbering system used to classify and identify all roads in Great Britain. Each road is given a single letter, which represents the road's category, and a subsequent number, with a length of between 1 and 4 digits. Originally introduced to arrange...
spurs do not follow a noticeable numbering system; they would be impossible to assign due to the quantity of A-road numbers in use.
India
The Indian National Highway system designates spur routes of the main National Highways with alphabets. For example,
National Highway 1National Highway 1 or is a National Highway in Northern India that links the National capital New Delhi to the town of Wagah in Punjab near the India-Pakistan International border. The highway is maintained by National Highways Authority of India. The highway originally started from Lahore in...
has 4 spur routes: NH 1A, NH 1B, NH 1C and NH 1D, the shortest of which is just 6 km in distance (NH 1C) and the longest is 663 km (NH 1A). While the spur routes essentially originate at the parent National Highway, they are not essentially secondary in status as some of the spur routes serve important cities in India (
SrinagarSrinagar , is the capital of the northernmost state of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir that is situated in India-administered Kashmir. It is situated in Kashmir Valley and lies on the banks of the Jhelum River, a tributary of the Indus. The city is famous for its lakes and houseboats...
, the capital of the state of
Jammu and KashmirJammu and Kashmir is the northernmost state of India. It is situated mostly in the Himalayan mountains. Jammu and Kashmir shares a border with the states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south and internationally with the People's Republic of China to the north and east and the Pakistani...
is served by the spur route NH 1A). Some spur routes are specifically used to connect important Indian
port||-||-||-||-||-||-||-||-|}A port is a facility for receiving ships and/or transferring cargo. It is usually found at the edge of an ocean, sea, river, or lake. The best ports have deep water in channels or berths, and protection from the wind and waves...
s. (e.g.
NH 5ANational Highway 5A is a National Highway in India. NJ 5A starts at Haridaspur and terminates at Paradip Port. The highway is 77 km long and runs entirely in the state of Orissa.-See also:...
links
ParadipParadip is a town, a seaport and a notified area committee in Jagatsinghapur District in the Indian state of Orissa.-Geography:Paradip is located at . It has an average elevation of .-Economy:...
with its parent NH 5,
NH 7ANational Highway 7A is located in India. It is a runs for a smaller distance connecting Palayamkottai in Tirunelveli with port town Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu. The distance between these towns are 51 KM. 47.2 KM of this road is being widened into 4 lanes. The project which started on February 2004...
links Tuticorin with NH 7).