Skip to main content

Interstate 696

While in the Detroit Area this year I drove the entirety of Interstate 696.


I-696 is an approximately 28.4 mile spur route of I-96 which runs east/west from I-96/I-275/M-5 in Farming Hills to I-94 in St. Clair Shores.  I-696 serves a primary connector route of the northern suburbs of Detroit and has a contentious history regarding some of it's newer segments.

According to michiganhighways.org a chargeable Interstate route between Farmington Hills and St. Clair Shores was approved in 1956.  Amusingly the Lodge Freeway north of the Edsel Ford Freeway (I-94) was signed as I-696 Business Spur in 1962 even before a single segment of I-696 opened.  I-696 between I-96/I-275/M-5 east to Orchard Lake Road opened in July of 1963 and extension to US 24/Lodge Freeway was completed by December.  The State of Michigan received Federal Funding in 1966 to extend I-696 to I-94, but this is where construction of the freeway slowed.  By early 1979 I-696 opened between I-75 east to I-94.  The remaining segment of I-696 would be opened to traffic in December of 1989 between US 24/M-10 and I-75.  I-696 is officially known as the "Walter P. Reuther Freeway" but unlike the majority of major Detroit Area freeways is rarely referred to as such.

michiganhighways.org on I-696

My approach to I-696 in 2019 was east from I-96 east.  That being said my initial approach was during the evening therefore these two photos are my approach to I-696 east from I-275 north/I-96 east in 2015.  I-696 begins a mutual junction where M-5 can accessed along the corridor of Grand River in Farmington Hills of Oakland County.



I-696 eastbound crosses through Farmington Hills into Southfield.  In Southfield I-696 meets M-10 on the Lodge Freeway and US 24 on Telegraph Road at Exit 8.  The Lodge Freeway was signed as I-696 BS until it was designated as US 10 in 1970.  In 1986 the Lodge Freeway was designated M-10 when US 10 was truncated to Bay City.




I-696 east enters Oak Park, Huntington Woods and Royal Oak where it has a junction with M-1 on Woodward Avenue at Exit 16.




I-696 east meets I-75 at Exit 18 and enters Madison Heights.


East of Madison Heights I-696 enters Warren of Macomb County.  At Exit 23 I-696 has a junction with M-53 on Van Dyke Avenue.





In east Warren I-696 east meets M-97 on Grosebeck Highway at Exit 26.



In Roseville I-696 east meets M-3 (former US 25) at Exit 27/Gratiot Avenue.




I-696 east terminates at I-94 in St. Clair Shores.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Old River Lock & Control Structure (Lettsworth, LA)

  The Old River Control Structure (ORCS) and its connecting satellite facilities combine to form one of the most impressive flood control complexes in North America. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Red River and Atchafalaya River nearby, this structure system was fundamentally made possible by the Flood Control Act of 1928 that was passed by the United States Congress in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 however a second, less obvious motivation influenced the construction here. The Mississippi River’s channel has gradually elongated and meandered in the area over the centuries, creating new oxbows and sandbars that made navigation of the river challenging and time-consuming through the steamboat era of the 1800s. This treacherous area of the river known as “Turnbull’s Bend” was where the mouth of the Red River was located that the upriver end of the bend and the Atchafalaya River, then effectively an outflow

California State Route 203 the proposed Minaret Summit Highway

California State Route 203 is an approximately nine-mile State Highway located near Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Mono County.  California State Route 203 as presently configured begins at US Route 395, passes through Mammoth Lakes and terminates at the Madera County line at Minaret Summit.  What is now California State Route 203 was added to the State Highway System in 1933 as Legislative Route Number 112.  The original Mammoth Lakes State Highway ended at Lake Mary near the site of Old Mammoth and was renumbered to California State Route 203 in 1964.  The modern alignment of the highway to Minaret Summit was adopted during 1967.   The corridor of Minaret Summit and Mammoth Pass have been subject to numerous proposed Trans-Sierra Highways.  The first corridor was proposed over Mammoth Pass following a Southern Pacific Railroad survey in 1901.  In 1931 a corridor between the Minarets Wilderness and High Sierra Peaks Wilderness was reserved by the Forest Service for po