Different Highway Designations in the U.S.
A state highway, state road, or state route (and the equivalent provincial highway, provincial road, or provincial route, and in some cases depending on type of administrative division) is usually a road that is either numbered or maintained by a sub-national state or province. A road numbered by a state or province falls below numbered national highways (Canada being a notable exception to this rule) in the hierarchy (route numbers are used to aid navigation, and may or may not indicate ownership or maintenance). Roads maintained by a state or province include both nationally numbered highways and un-numbered state highways. Depending on the state, "state highway" may be used for one meaning and "state road" or "state route" for the other.
In some countries such as New Zealand, the word "state" is used in its sense of a sovereign state or country. By this meaning a state highway is a road maintained and numbered by the national government rather than local authorities.
Each state also has a state highway system. State highways are of varying standards, capacity, and quality. Some state highways become so heavily traveled they are built to Interstate Highway standards. Others are more lightly traveled and have low capacity.
United States[]
- See also: Numbered highways in the United States § State highways
State highways are generally a mixture of primary and secondary roads, although some are freeways (for example, State Route 99 in California, which links many of the cities of the Central Valley, Route 128 in Massachusetts, or parts of Route 101 in New Hampshire). Each state has its own system for numbering and its own marker. The default marker is a white circle containing a black sans serif number (often inscribed in a black square or slightly rounded square), according to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). However each state is free to choose a different marker, and most states have. States may choose a design theme relevant to its state (such as an outline of the state itself) to distinguish state route markers from interstate, county, or municipal route markers.
Many state highway markers are designed to suggest the geographic shape of the state or some other state symbol such as its flag. Most of the others are generically rectangular or some other neutral shape.
The default design for state highway markers is the circular highway shield, which is how state highways are designated on most maps and atlases. Currently, five states: Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, and New Jersey, use the circular shield for road signage on their state highways.
Three types of shields- one representing the state, another just plain rectangular, and another the default circular highway shield.
Canada[]
- Main article: Numbered highways in Canada
Canada is divided into 10 provinces and 3 territories, each of which maintains its own system of provincial or territorial highways, which form the majority of the country's highway network. There is also the national transcontinental Trans-Canada Highway system, which is marked by distinct signs, but has no uniform numeric designation across the country. In the eastern provinces, for instance, an unnumbered (though sometimes with a named route branch) Trans-Canada route marker is co-signed with a numbered provincial sign, with the provincial route often continuing alone outside the Trans-Canada Highway section. However, in the western provinces, the two parallel Trans-Canada routes are consistently numbered with Trans-Canada route markers; as Highways 1 and 16 respectively.
Canada also has a designated National Highway System, but the system is completely unsigned, aside from the Trans-Canada routes. This makes Canada unique in that national highway designations are generally secondary to subnational routes.