State Roads in Florida: Encyclopedia II - State Roads in Florida - History

State Roads in Florida - History

Prior to the 1945 renumbering, State Roads were given numbers in the order they were added to the system. The 1945 renumbering removed a lot of roads that had never been built and added some that had not existed prior to 1945.

Until the early 1980s, the Florida Department of Transportation continued to add State Roads to the system. At some point, they began to classify roads into primary, secondary, and local roads. Primary roads would continue to be state-maintained. 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 routes and some primary routes 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 particulary 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. 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki