Interstate 124 (I-124) is an
unsigned designation for a short segment of a controlled-access highway located in
Chattanooga
Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, ...
,
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
. During periods where this segment of
U.S. Route 27 (US 27) has been signed as I-124, it has served as a
spur route
A spur route is a short road forming a branch from a longer, more important road such as a freeway, Interstate Highway, or motorway. A bypass or beltway should not be considered a true spur route as it typically reconnects with another or the s ...
of
I-24
Interstate 24 (I-24) is an Interstate Highway in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. It runs diagonally from I-57, south of Marion, Illinois, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, at I-75. It travels through Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, ...
to downtown Chattanooga. The road segment has not been signed as I-124 since the late 1980s (it is marked on overhead signs and milemarkers as US 27),
and the
Tennessee Department of Transportation
The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) is a multimodal agency with statewide responsibilities in roadways, aviation, public transit, waterways, and railroads. The mission of TDOT is to provide a safe and reliable transportation syste ...
official map no longer designates it as I-124, but some DOT publications still make reference to the designation.
Route description
The US 27 freeway diverges from I-24 just before the Moccasin Bend in the
Tennessee River
The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names, ...
, continues north through downtown Chattanooga, and then across the Tennessee River as a limited-access freeway on the
P. R. Olgiati Bridge. The river is the point at which the I-124 designation ends. After crossing the river, the freeway continues under the US 27 designation for another , beyond which the spur continues under the
State Route 111 (SR 111) designation for a further .
The entire length of I-124 is part of the
National Highway System, a system of routes determined to be the most important for the nation's economy, mobility, and defense.
History
The route that is now I-124 was proposed in the 1950s by then-mayor of Chattanooga
P.R. "Rudy" Olgiati to provide a secondary access across the Tennessee River and relieve congestion, which had developed on the
Market Street Market Street may refer to:
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...
and
Walnut Street Bridges.
The section of highway between Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was built between 1955 and 1959.
[ The southern portion, located between I-24 and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, was built between 1961 and 1963, when that corresponding section of I-24 was built. The interchange with I-24, known as the "Big Scramble", was reworked in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the I-124 signage was removed at this time.][
A major reconstruction project commenced in December 2015 to widen and modernize I-124, which will reconstruct all interchanges, provide adequate shoulders and median divider, widen the route to six lanes, and remove the S-curve at the 4th street interchange. Originally scheduled to be completed by July 2019, the project ran into multiple setbacks, which delayed the completion until January 2021.]
Exit list
See also
*
*
References
External links
I-124 at AARoads
{{DEFAULTSORT:I124
Transportation in Hamilton County, Tennessee
24-1
24-1
Transportation in Chattanooga, Tennessee
24-1
1
U.S. Route 27