If you wanted to travel up the middle of the United States from Texas to Michigan, it's going
to take you a long time. There is no direct route running through this part of the country. Yes, you
can drive north or south, crossing through several states by taking a series of various highways,
but wouldn’t it be easier if there was a single interstate connecting these two states? This
was one of the reasons why the U.S. government wanted to build I-69, a federally funded highway
that would extend over 1,500 miles and cut travel time through the middle of the country by hours.
Simply put, Interstate 69 would be a superhighway that could allow travelers
and long-haul truckers to traverse the middle of the United States with ease. But even though the
idea for the I-69 was conceived back in the late 1940s, it still hasn’t been completed.
This means that the U.S. has been working on this highway network for over 75 years.
What could possibly be taking them so long? To answer this question,
we must go back in time. The planned route for the I-69 has changed over the decades.
And although a decent amount of the originally proposed highway
has been completed, there are still major holes throughout the country.
When the Federal Government originally proposed I-69, the plan was to create a
route that went northeast from Indianapolis to Flint, Michigan. This was seen as an important
step in the international highway system as it would allow for easier travel to and from
a major economic hub in the midwestern part of the country. After some slight changes,
it was determined that the I-69 would need to travel through Fort Wayne,
Indiana, and go further north, where it would end in Port Huron, Michigan.
This was an ambitious plan that would take millions of dollars and years of
work to complete . By 1957, the I-69 ran from Indianapolis to Angola, Indiana,
right near the border of Michigan. It would take another 11 years before Interstate 69
finally made it to Flint, Michigan, completing another milestone in the highway’s construction.
However, a lot more work still needed to be done to reach the goal of connecting Indianapolis to
Port Huron via Interstate 69. In 1987, almost 40 years after the initial plans were drawn up,
the government gave the official approval for I-69 to extend past Flint and go all the
way to Port Huron. Construction resumed once again, and in 1992 the section of I-69 that
stretched from Indianapolis to Port Huron was completed. That is ironic because if the U.S.
government had just been content with what they had achieved with the I-69 over the last 50 years,
they could have saved themselves a lot of embarrassment down the road… literally.
But that’s not what happened because in 1991, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act
was passed, and with it, ambitious plans to extend I-69 all the way to the border of Mexico were put
in place. This bill initially expanded the I-69 into two new corridors. Corridor 18, which would
connect Indianapolis to Memphis, Tennessee, and corridor 20 which would require that the
interstate be built from the Arkansas border through Texas and all the way to the Mexican
border. Obviously, there were already holes in this plan. The Intermodal Surface Transportation
Efficiency Act of 1991 did not address the gaps in Louisiana and Arkansas that would be needed to
complete the highway, and it didn’t have any clear way to fund this ambitious new I-69 extension.
It wasn’t until the Appropriations Act of 1993 that these holes were finally addressed,
and a completed plan for what Interstate 69 should look like was presented. Some
Federal funding was given to the project, but not nearly enough to complete the highway,
which meant that the states through which it ran were expected to pick up the slack.
Unfortunately, the Federal Government did not communicate this very well,
and the construction of the I-69 broke down before it could even get started.
Over the next several years, portions of Interstate 69 were built. Indiana,
in particular, pushed hard to extend its portion of the I-69 from Indianapolis all the
way to the southern border of the state, where the highway would cross over into Kentucky. However,
due to a lack of funding once again, even this section couldn’t be completed. When
construction reached the Ohio River in 2004, where a bridge was needed to
connect I-69 from Indiana to Kentucky, everything came screeching to a halt.
Money ran out, and construction of the I-69 was stopped until a source
of funding could be procured. You’re probably thinking: well,
I’m sure funding was secured at some point in the last 15 years to complete the bridge
so that I-69 in Indiana could connect to I-69 in Kentucky. Because, by definition,
for an interstate to be considered an interstate, it needs to cross state lines.
But if this is you’re thought process, you’d be wrong. To this day, the bridge has not been built,
so the only way to cross the Ohio River at this juncture is to turn onto U.S. Highway 41,
cross the bridge there, drive into Kentucky, and eventually make your way back onto I-69 .
This seems so crazy that you might think we’ve made it up,
but it's right there on the map. You cannot get across the state line between Ohio and
Kentucky via the I-69 because that part of the highway was never completed.
In 2007, the United States Department of Transportation designated I-69 as
one of six Corridors of the Future, which opened it up to additional
forms of funding and a more streamlined review and planning process. However,
due to budgetary issues once again, this funding was withdrawn, which led to certain
states halting their construction of the I-69 until Federal funding returned.
Then in 2008, there seemed to be hope for the uncompleted sections of I-69. George W.
Bush signed HR 1195, which planned to redesignate parts of already existing highways as I-69. This
would save on costs since new roads wouldn’t need to be built. However, upon inspection,
the Federal Highway Administration stated that most of the existing
highways did not meet interstate standards and, therefore, couldn’t be redesignated. So,
instead of connecting parts of the interstate by changing the numbers on signs to say I-69—which
seems a little like cheating—the states ended up with just as many gaps as they started with.
Between 2007 and 2015, Texas took notes on what happened in other parts of the country and started
to upgrade their existing highways along the I-69 planned route so that when the time came, all they
would have to do was swap out signs. This seemed like a good idea, but it still hasn’t allowed the
Lone Star State to connect its highways in a way that meets Federal standards for the interstate.
This means that, like most of I-69, the highway does not run continuously through Texas either.
Today, Texas, Kentucky, and Indiana are still actively working on their portions of I-69.
Indiana has completed almost all construction of I-69 except for the southernmost section,
where the bridge into Kentucky still hasn’t been built. These states have taken it upon
themselves to secure other sources of funding by collaborating with private businesses. In
the past, most interstates didn’t have tolls, but this is changing as the money
needed to maintain existing highways and to build new ones is in short supply.
As recently as 2021, Tennessee has said that it will once again begin construction on parts
of I-69 to connect the surrounding area to Memphis. For the previous four years,
Tennesse decided to stop the project altogether as
Federal funding had dried up. Now the state is taking it upon themselves to
complete another portion of the highway with minimal help from the Federal government.
This abbreviated timeline of the I-69 and the problems it’s run into paints a bleak picture.
For over 75 years, the U.S. has been working on completing this highway, and it’s a long way from
being finished. The fact of the matter is that certain states haven’t even started building
their section of the I-69, even though they were supposed to have begun over two decades ago.
So, what is the current state of the I-69,
and how close is each state to completing its section of this ambitious project?
We will start at the northernmost point of the I-69 and travel south to see how far we can get
before running out of road. Michigan is the only state that has a continuous stretch of
I-69 without any breaks. Michigan has just around 202 miles of I-69 running through it,
which extends from Port Huron all the way to the Indiana border, where it successfully
crosses over into the next state. So, if you were to start your drive at Lake Huron,
you wouldn’t have to get off I-69 until you got to Indiana except to charge your car or get gas.
Once in Indiana, you could travel south all the way to Indianapolis, where you would have
to take an offramp to get on the I-465 for a brief time until looping back around to the
I-69 on the other side of the city. Then it’s smooth traveling all the way down to the border
of Indiana and Kentucky, where you will have to get off the I-69 once again to get across
the border because the bridge across the Ohio River still hasn't been completed. All in all,
you would have traveled just under 315 miles on the I-69 in Indiana.
After getting off of the I-69 and crossing into Kentucky, you would eventually find
yourself back on the interstate. Large parts of the I-69 are completed in the state,
and although many parts are not technically parts of the I-69 as they haven’t been renamed yet,
you will be following the intended route of the interstate. Until Kentucky gets its highways up
to Federal standards, they cannot technically be considered a part of I-69, which means
there are technically only 148 miles of the interstate for you to travel on in Kentucky.
After crossing from Kentucky into Tennessee, you’ll notice something rather strange. You
were on the I-69 right up until the border, then once you crossed into Tennessee, I-69 disappeared,
and you found yourself on U.S. Highway 51. You might wonder how you got here;
it all has to do with the interstate standards of the Federal government. Tennessee highways
do not meet the qualifications to become interstates. Therefore,
even though you’re technically on the same route you were before, and this is the path that the
I-69 is supposed to travel through, you are not on the I-69 anymore, according to a map.
In fact, you won’t be on I-69 again until you reach Memphis. It’s on the
approach to downtown Memphis that the I-40 suddenly becomes both the I-40 and the I-69
before the I-69 splits away and continues south towards Mississippi. Once outside of Memphis,
however, the I-69 turns back into U.S. Highway 51 and continues toward the Mississippi border.
All in all, you are only on the I-69 for 21 miles in Tennesee, which is almost the
same exact amount of time you’ll spend on completed parts of the I-69 in Mississippi.
Once you cross the border of Mississippi, you will find yourself magically back on the I-69. However,
this will only continue for just over 20 miles before the interstate turns into U.S.
Highway 61. Interestingly, it was not the Federal Government that provided funds for
this section of the intestate but a casino that wanted to improve the state’s infrastructure for
people traveling to the area. A casino may seem like an odd benefactor for building a highway,
but without them, the entire state of Mississippi would have zero stretches
of I-69 within its borders. The craziest part is that the funds from the casino not
only allowed this section of the I-69 to be built but it was completed ahead of schedule,
something that is almost unheard of for a public works project in the U.S.
Once you get through Mississippi and into Arkansas, finding where the I-69 picks up again
will be impossible. That is because there are no finished portions of the highway in the entire
state. There are sections that were started or are planned to be built in the future. But currently,
the government in the state of Arkansas believes the Federal government has overstepped by forcing
them to build an interstate highway. Due to the fact that there is very little Federal funding
for the I-69, Arkansas has a point. If the Federal government wants the interstate project done,
it needs to provide the necessary funds to help alleviate the economic burdens put on the states.
Like Arkansas, you will not find the I-69 in Louisiana either. The highway system
in the state cannot just put up new signs and declare old Louisiana highways as I-69 because,
like in many other parts of the country, the roads don’t meet Federal standards.
And Louisiana has very little desire to change that fact. The state has
much bigger problems to deal with, such as high poverty, a failing education system,
and infrastructure that is in much more desperate need of being built than the I-69.
The reality is once you leave northern Mississippi, you won’t see the I-69 again until
you reach Texas. And even in a state known for its large highways going into and out of major cities,
there are a lot of gaps in Texas’s portion of the I-69 as well. Going into Huston,
you will be able to find the I-69, but it later becomes U.S. Highway 59 just to the
south of the city. Other sections of the I-69 were built outside of Corpus Christi
and along the border with Mexico in three different places. Altogether,
the completed portions of the I-69 in Texas come to around 166 miles in length.
There is something very strange about an interstate system that only directly
passes through two states. In this case, Michigan into Indiana. The planning and
execution of Interstate 69 were full of problems from the get-go. And as a result,
the current plan for the highway likely won’t be finished for a very long time, if ever. It’s
worth noting that I-69 was almost finished at one time. If in 1991, the U.S. government
hadn’t decided to try and extend the interstate from the northern border to the southern border,
then in 1992, when I-69 reached Port Huron, the project would have been completed.
But that is not how history played out. Now the U.S. has a very long, unconnected interstate that
has sat uncompleted for decades. However, we do have to remember that even though the
I-69 doesn’t extend across the U.S., you can still drive along the planned route. Most of
what should be the I-69 is already highways and roads; they just don’t meet the qualifications
to be classified as a national interstate. This means that traveling from the border of
Mexico to Port Huron will take you somewhere between 25 and 30 hours, but it can be done.
In fact, you will likely drive along all of the finished parts of the I-69 if you decide to cut
through this part of the country. But it’s highly unlikely you will ever be able to hop on the I-69
at its southernmost point and drive all the way up to Michigan, at least in our lifetimes.
So, what are the actual reasons why the United States just can’t seem to finish I-69?
There are currently ten major unconnected sections of the I-69. Most of the incomplete
portions are a direct result of a lack of funding. As mentioned before,
this is a Federal project that was thrust upon certain states without proper budgeting.
Having a high standard for road maintenance and infrastructure is very important. But,
if the U.S. Federal government wants these standards to be uniform across all states,
they need to provide the necessary funds to help each state reach those standards.
It’s estimated that the remaining construction that needs to be done in order to connect all
of the completed sections of the I-69 will cost somewhere around 25 billion dollars. Right now,
the Federal government does not have that kind of money to allocate to a single infrastructure
project, and the states don’t have enough money to split the cost between them. Every year, the I-69
needs to compete with other Federal projects for funding, and there is no shortage of things that
need to get done. This oftentimes means that the I-69 gets placed on the back burner, which is why
after Indiana and Michigan finished their sections of the interstate, not much else has gotten done.
And although the Federal government oftentimes tries to limit the number of tolls on interstate
highways, it’s becoming clear that if I-69 is ever going to get finished,
there will need to be toll plazas in place to recoup the money that is initially put
into its construction. That being said, toll plazas can’t be built until the interstate
is built, making this a moot point right now. Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi have all
passed laws allowing them to incorporate tolls on their stretches of the I-69, but since tolls
are so unpopular with their constituents, state representatives are hesitant to implement them.
Besides funding, there is another major problem that has slowed down
the construction of the I-69 and even halted it completely. Converting old highways into
multi-lane interstates has a huge impact on the environment. Building brand-new sections
of highways has an even larger impact. Many of the delays that have occurred during the
construction of the I-69 have been caused by environmentalist studies and lawsuits.
And rightfully so. Much of the proposed path of the I-69 cuts through wetlands,
forested areas, and geologically sensitive topography. There should
absolutely be environmental impact studies before any infrastructure
is built anywhere. Obviously, this does not always happen, and even when it does,
sometimes government officials either don’t listen to what scientists have to say or just don’t care.
Take the section of the I-69 that was constructed south of Indianapolis. For
years environmentalists argued that building this part of the interstate would pollute underground
water systems and endanger rare species that lived in the area, but the state government
of Indiana didn’t want to hear about it. In October of 2006, environmental groups
and several private businesses filed a federal lawsuit to keep the state from building the I-69
through areas where it would greatly harm fragile ecosystems. The lawsuit claimed
that the Indiana Department of Transportation had “ignored harmful environmental impacts.”
Unfortunately, on December 11, 2007, a judge ruled in favor of the state of Indiana,
and seven months later, work continued on the new section of the I-69. This allowed
Indiana to complete all parts of the I-69 within its border except for the
bridge going over the Ohio River. But this was done at the expense
of the environment and caused damage to ecosystems that will never fully recover.
Several other sections the I-69 are planned to pass through environmentally
fragile or protected areas. This has caused environmental groups to bring up a number of
lawsuits against state governments and private contractors. However,
if what was done in Indiana sets a precedent for future lawsuits,
then these environmental concerns will not stand in the way of the I-69 being built in the future.
The main obstacle to the completion of the I-69 is mostly a lack of funding.
The Federal government had ambitious plans with no real strategy to fund the project.
This is the main reason why it has taken over 75 years to construct the I-69 and why
it will likely take another 75 years, if not longer, to connect all of its pieces together.
Now watch “The Most Dangerous Streets in The World.” Or check out “What If the USA Broke Up.”