WV: US52/King Coal Hwy cluster****

[rickmastfan67]

Original: http://tm.teresco.org/forum/index.php?topic=52.0

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StreetView was recently updated in this area on the 'Eastern' end @ WV-44, so I get to see this clusterfuck for US-52....  Man, add the King Coal segment as a completely separate US-52 file?  Add it as a 'spur' route?  Reroute the entire route onto it, even though the 'old' route is still being posted the main route at the same time? Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi!.

[yakra]

Ack. I'm glad I don't maintain WV, and have never been there. Has there been an AASHTO application?

[rickmastfan67]

Ack. I'm glad I don't maintain WV, and have never been there. Has there been an AASHTO application?

As far as I'm aware of, no.

Still, I'm open to opinions here on what we should do about this interesting 'shituation'.

[yakra]

You just edited the OP, I see.
Title, was it?

[rickmastfan67]

You just edited the OP, I see.
Title, was it?

Yes, just the title (& the link to the original). lol.  Did that after I split it off from the 'original' topic so it could stand alone.

[mapmikey]

Although it isn't posted with a banner, you could add it as Future US 52...

[Duke87]

My suggestion is to leave things as they are for now.

My interpretation of the signage as seen in GMSV is that it clearly shows US 52 still following its original routing. There are no signs suggesting US 52 follows the "new" routing at the intersection of US 52 and WV 44, at the intersection of US 52 and WV 65, or at the intersection of either WV 44 and WV 65 at King Coal Highway. There are no US 52 shields along either supposed concurrency as well. All there are are US 52 reassurance shields along King Coal Highway.

Seems to me these signs were posted pre-emptively in anticipation of US 52 being rerouted in the future... but that hasn't actually happened so their presence is in error. Rather like all the I-86 shields in New York that are exposed along what is not yet (and may never be) I-86.

[rickmastfan67]

My suggestion is to leave things as they are for now.

My interpretation of the signage as seen in GMSV is that it clearly shows US 52 still following its original routing. There are no signs suggesting US 52 follows the "new" routing at the intersection of US 52 and WV 44, at the intersection of US 52 and WV 65, or at the intersection of either WV 44 and WV 65 at King Coal Highway. There are no US 52 shields along either supposed concurrency as well. All there are are US 52 reassurance shields along King Coal Highway.

Seems to me these signs were posted pre-emptively in anticipation of US 52 being rerouted in the future... but that hasn't actually happened so their presence is in error. Rather like all the I-86 shields in New York that are exposed along what is not yet (and may never be) I-86.

Problem is, that the WVDOT county maps clearly show the 'old' route as CR-252/57 now.  And the map is as-of August '17.
ftp://gis.transportation.wv.gov/GISCountyMaps/MingoSHEET%202WB.pdf

[mapmikey]

You could also just treat it as a separate primary segment like you would a state route with multiple segments - the fact that the intent is to have US 52 follow this routing and decommission the other one at some point could be viewed as not relevant.  If they had numbered the new piece WV 452 as a place holder there would be no question what to do.  They just elected to save some sign money by putting up what the route will actually be someday...

[froggie]

In past cases where official maps disagreed with older signage, we tended to go with the maps.  So based on precedent, mainline US 52 could be moved to the new highway.

Mike's suggestion is an alternative to this, but given the new official mapping (demoting the old route to CR 252/57), I'd be loath to have two parallel segments.

[rickmastfan67]

In past cases where official maps disagreed with older signage, we tended to go with the maps.  So based on precedent, mainline US 52 could be moved to the new highway.

The problem with that you have to be 'actively' searching out the new alignment, otherwise you might not know about it.  That's why I kinda leaning towards just leaving the 'mainline' route on the old road till WVDOT decides to add a multiplex along WV-44 & WV-65 to connect the 'new' highway to the full route.  Thus, adding it as a 'Future' file might work the best here, especially since I don't know of any AASHTO approval for the reroute yet.

[rickmastfan67]

Current GIS Map of Mingo County still shows it on the new alignment.  StreetView still hasn't been back since December '16.  Has anybody else been down in this area lately to see if anything has changed?

Still no AASHTO submission for a reroute to boot.

[Markkos1992]

I just watched roadwaywiz's videos from this segment that I believe were filmed in June 2020, and it looks like nothing has changed.

[rickmastfan67]

I just watched roadwaywiz's videos from this segment that I believe were filmed in June 2020, and it looks like nothing has changed.

I just happened to take a look again at the WV-65 end of the King Coal Highway, and noticed that Google has fixed the imagery in that area (before they didn't have imagery properly showing on the reroute of WV-65 up to the intersection).

Now I can see that there are US-52 shields there in both directions of WV-65 (SB & NB) that I think a 'separate' segment of US-52 here is now warranted till WVDOH gets around to properly reroute it along both WV-44 & WV-65 and off the old road (like shown on their maps).

So, I'll add a separate file, but leave this topic un-solved for now.  Since there's no real city around there, I'll just name the file as 'wv.us052kin', with the 'city' name of "King Coal Highway".  Hopefully, WVDOH will get that reroute done (& submit a request to the AASHTO about it) soon, so I can delete this file, reroute the main onto it, and fix this craziness.

[Markkos1992]

I thought that WVDOH was working on extending this farther to the southeast.  Maybe whenever that gets built this nonsense will end.

EDIT: I think I confused the green section (from roadwaywiz's recent WV Webinar) with the part being built from WV 123 to US 460 scheduled to be completed later this year.