| US 1 | |||
| Get started | Oxford | ||
| End | Morrisville | ||
| Length | 81 mi | ||
| Length | 130 km | ||
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According to 800zipcodes, US 1 is a US Highway in the US state of Pennsylvania. The road forms a diagonal east-west route in the southeastern part of the state, primarily in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. The route is at least four lanes everywhere, and often a motorway as well. The route is 130 kilometers long.
Travel directions
US 1 at Langhorne north of Philadelphia.
US 1 in Maryland comes from Baltimore. Where the US 1 in Maryland has a somewhat secondary character, the road has been developed as a freeway directly from the border with Pennsylvania. The highway section is 37 kilometers long and bypasses an exurban area that is relatively densely built-up. These places are suburbs of both Wilmington and Philadelphia. The US 1 here leads through slightly sloping area with little forest. To the east, the area becomes more wooded. The interstate ends at Kenneth Square, after which US 1 is a 4-lane urban arterial with intersections to Media, on the west side of Philadelphia. In Concordville one crosses both US 202 and US 322.
Around the suburb Media, US 1 is again a freeway, bypassing Media and connecting to Interstate 476. US 1 then forms an urban arterial through more densely built-up areas, these are the older suburbs of Philadelphia. The road then crosses City Avenue, which forms the boundary between the city of Philadelphia and the northern suburbs.
US 1 then runs as the Roosevelt Expressway through northern Philadelphia. This section begins at an interchange with Interstate 76 and crosses the Schuylkill River. The first 5 kilometers of the Roosevelt Expressway is a highway, the rest is a wide single-level road with parallel roads. Although not a freeway, this is the main outcrop of northern Philadelphia. This partly coincides with US 13.
The wide part of US 1 with 4 lanes and 12 lanes is 20 kilometers long and will also continue for a while in the northeastern suburbs. In Bensalem follows an interchange with Interstate 276. From this point, US 1 becomes a freeway again, running 2×2 lanes on a narrow profile through the northeastern suburbs of Philadelphia. Just outside Trenton it follows an interchange with Interstate 295. US 1 runs as a highway directly to downtown Trenton in New Jersey. US 1 in New Jersey then continues through Trenton.
History
West of Philadelphia
In 1958, the construction of a short bypass around the suburb of Media began, which was completed in 1960. However, the interchange with the I-476 would still be at least 30 years away.
Further west, construction began in 1965 on a bypass from Oxford to Kennett Square, a stretch of highway that is now 22 miles from the Maryland border. Initially, only the eastern 10 kilometers were under construction. This section was opened in 1966 and numbered US 1 from 1967. Construction of the western section began in 1968 until just before the border with Maryland. This section opened in 1970.
Not built
There’s about 15 miles missing between the freeway at Kennett Square and the Media bypass. In the 1960s and 1970s, a through highway was planned between Philadelphia and Baltimore, which would pass north of the state of Delaware. This was supposed to relieve I-95. In 1977, however, these plans were called off. In the late 1970s, the extension to Baltimore in Maryland was also canceled.
Roosevelt Expressway
In 1902, Roosevelt Boulevard was envisioned by the then mayor of Philadelphia as a broad, 100-foot-wide street. Between 1903 and 1914, the boulevard was built at a cost of $3.5 million. In 1926 the US Highway system was created and Roosevelt Boulevard was then numbered US 1. In 1937 the road was transferred from the Philadelphia Department of Street to the Pennsylvania Department of Highways (today the Department of Transportation ). In the 1950s and 1960s, the boulevard was built further to the northeast, as the spatial and economic developments after the Second World War required new infrastructure.
In 1961, the 4-kilometer Roosevelt Expressway was built to connect with the Schuylkill Expressway, connecting the north of the city to the highway network.
In the 1960s, it was proposed that Roosevelt Boulevard be converted into an expressway over a longer distance as the northeast of Philadelphia was growing rapidly, as was the urban area to its northeast. The cost to extend the highway for 15 miles through north Philadelphia was estimated at $94 million. It had to be a 2×2 deepened highway. Between 1970 and 1974, 100 buildings were expropriated and 29 of them were demolished. At the same time, Philadelphia also embarked on a long road of population decline, from 2 million in 1950 to 1.4 million in 2010. The first protests against the highway came in 1971, when the governor wanted to review all highway projects in the state. Opponents and railway proponents saw this as an opportunity to torpedo the plan. In 1977, all funds for unbuilt highways were frozen. This effectively marked the end of all planned highways in Philadelphia, although the plans lasted until 1980.
However, in 1999, plans resurfaced to pull Philadelphia’s economy out of the doldrums. Large parts of the city were far from highways and poorly connected, and the population moved away by tens of thousands a year. The population declined by 430,000 inhabitants in 30 years between 1970 and 2000. To turn this tide, a number of improvements were proposed, such as extending the Roosevelt Expressway 20 kilometers to Southampton Road in the far northeast of the city. Contrary to previous proposals, the highway had to be within the existing right-of-wayof Roosevelt Boulevard. In 2001, a preliminary $3.4 billion plan was approved to upgrade the city’s subway system. However, in 2002, it was reported that the plan for the Roosevelt Expressway still had support among traffic and safety experts. In 2003 it was stated that construction should start in 2009 and be completed in 2018. However, the plan is still on hold to this day.
East of Philadelphia
In the 1950s, several proposals were made for a highway through Trenton and the northeast of the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Initially they did not want to compete with the toll road New Jersey Turnpike, but in the end they opted for a highway. Then there were plans to run I-95 through the center of Trenton, but it was feared that there was not enough capacity for that. I-95 would eventually follow a more westerly route through Ewing around Trenton.
In the 1950s, the construction of US 1 began as a highway between Philadelphia and Trenton. In 1955 the first section opened between US 13 in Morrisville and the New Jersey border at Trenton. In 1970, the section from the Philadelphia border to Langhorne opened, now connecting with Interstate 95. In 1972 the highway was extended a short distance at Langhorne, and in 1978 another section opened between Fallingston and Morrisville. In 1987 the last stretch between Langhorne and Fallingston was opened to traffic.
Over time, there have been various plans to convert the entire US 1 from the Roosevelt Expressway into a freeway, thereby constructing a second through highway between Philadelphia and Trenton. However, these plans repeatedly failed to materialize within the city of Philadelphia.
