All photos are eastbound.


All over Kentucky, the Parkway system was built as a series of toll roads. However, instead of the ticket system typical of the Northeast, where you only stop upon entering and exiting the system, the Parkways were on a barrier system where traffic stopped every few miles to pay a small toll. It's much less efficient for traffic, but Kentucky found a way to make it the most efficient for toll collection by shoving the toll plazas underneath overpasses and setting up an innovative ramp system. The onramps at each interchange would merge first, just before the plaza, and then the offramps would diverge just after, guaranteeing that all traffic has to pay the toll whether entering, exiting, or continuing. This worked well enough until the fateful days when the toll plazas were removed from the Parkways, one by one, upon repayment of the initial bonds. Suddenly, the system is beset by a number of horridly substandard interchanges with incredibly short weaves at overpasses and no merge space. This one is Exit 10 on the Audubon Parkway, KY 416. You can see the concrete in the foreground starts to angle off to the right, taking traffic toward the third toll lane that no longer exists. There is no exit behind me, nor any entrance in the background, just what you see right here. Notice the "Yield" signs on the onramps, out of necessity.


US 60 used to run straight through Owensboro on its original alignment even after the Wendell Ford Bypass was built. As you can see from the scars on these signs, the Ford was signed as "Bypass US 60" during that time. More recently, KYTC decided to change the routes so that 60 follows the bypass and the old route was renamed a Business route. That's all well and good, really, except that what's now plain US 60 still functions as an Owensboro By-Pass. By removing that one key word one too many times, KYTC makes a mockery out of the assemblies, where there seems to be no preference for routing Owensboro traffic. Also, I don't know why the last two signs don't say EXIT ONLY on the bottom instead of ONLY, but, yeah, they should, and inside a black border, at that.

Onto US 60
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