My new I-64

April 25, 2009 by William.

Interstate 64 currently exists as a 954-mile freeway from suburban St. Louis, Missouri to Chesapeake, Virginia.  In between, I-64 currently serves such places as Evansville, Indiana (via I-164/Future I-69), Louisville, Lexington, Huntington, Charleston, and Richmond.

My plan would leave the bulk of I-64 unchanged, with 2 major exceptions: adoption of the 8664 plan to bypass Louisville, and a re-routing through Eastern Kentucky.   The plan would open up Louisville’s waterfront, connect Louisville’s East End to Southern Indiana, and better connect Eastern Kentucky to the rest of the state.

The 8664 site discusses the re-routing of the Louisville and Southern Indiana portions of I-64 at length.  If you initially dismissed this plan in the past, you might want to take a look at the rendering of Waterfront Parkway, a surface street that would replace the current Interstate 64, and its connection to the existing I-64 freeway (which they call I-364).

Another tweak I would make for the Louisville area would be to add an exit for Clark Station Road near the Jefferson/Shelby County line, splitting up one of the longest stretches of freeway in Kentucky between exits-and since one of those exits is I-265, that means it’s nearly 11 miles between Blankenbaker Parkway and KY 1848 in Simpsonville.

I-64 would remain unchanged from Simpsonville to Winchester, where I-64 currently has a junction with the Bert T. Combs Mountain Parkway.  An upgraded Mountain Parkway-part of which is a freeway, part of which is currently a two-lane highway-would become part of Interstate 64.  I-64 would then cover about 45 miles of new terrain, following US 460/KY 114 towards Pikeville.  In Pikeville, I-64 would meet up and overlap with the already-planned Interstate 66 and continue in to West Virginia.

In West Virginia, I-64 would need to cover very little additional terrain apart from the planned I-66 to rejoin the current I-64 at Crab Orchard, and would generally follow the route of WV 10 and WV 16.

What currently is almost a three-hour trip from Pikeville, Kentucky to Beckley, West Virginia, is reduced to about 45 miles.  The 213 miles between Winchester, Kentucky and Beckley, West Virginia is reduced to about 170 miles.

What happens to the rest of the current I-64 in Kentucky and West Virginia? It could become an extension of Interstate 79, even though it runs east to west like the Interstate 49 extension in Louisiana.  This portion could also be assigned a new number such as I-58 (I-60, I-62, and I-68 would be out of the question because of some US Highways that run through the Lexington area).

Should the Bluegrass Parkway ever connect to I-64 in Lexington, there would be an opportunity to further extend that Interstate designation (whatever it may be) through Lexington, to I-65 in Elizabethtown, down I-65 for a couple of miles, and down the portion of the Western Kentucky parkway not absorbed by I-66.

The I-64/I-77 overlap in West Virginia would simply become I-77.

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