U.S. Route 30 in Indiana

Highway in Indiana

U. S. Route 30 (US 30) is a road in the United States Numbered Highway System that runs from Astoria, Oregon, to Atlantic City, New Jersey. In Indiana, the route runs from the Illinois state line at Dyer to the Ohio state line east of Fort Wayne and New Haven. The 155.96 mile (251 km) of US 30 that lie within Indiana serve as a major conduit. The entire length of U. S. Route 30 in Indiana is included in the National Highway System (NHS). The highway includes four lane, rural sections, an urbanized, four lane divided expressway, and several high traffic, six lane freeway areas. First designated as a US Highway in 1926, US 30 replaced the original State Road 2 (SR 2) and SR 44 designation of the highway which dated back to the formation of the Indiana State Road system. A section of the highway originally served as part of the Lincoln Highway. Realignment and construction projects have expanded the highway to four lanes across the state, and the road is now part of a long stretch of US 30 from New Lenox, Illinois, to Canton, Ohio, where the road has at least four lanes (excluding ramps). There are over 40 traffic signals between I 65 at Merrillville and I 69 at Fort Wayne.

The entire length of U. S. Route 30 in Indiana is included in the National Highway System (NHS), a network of highways that are identified as being most important for the economy, mobility and defense of the United States. The highway is maintained by the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT), similar to all other U. S. Highways in the state. The department tracks the traffic volumes along all state highways as a part of its maintenance responsibilities using a metric called average annual daily traffic (AADT), calculated along a segment of roadway for any average day of the year. In 2010, INDOT figured that lowest traffic levels were 10,870 vehicles and 4,750 commercial vehicles used the highway daily between US 31 and SR 331. The peak traffic volumes were 69,280 vehicles and 12,660 commercial vehicles AADT along a section of US 30 that is concurrent with I 69, between the Lima Road (interchange 311) and Coldwater Road (interchange 312) exits in Fort Wayne.

US 30 enters Dyer from Lynwood, Illinois, along the original alignment of the Lincoln Highway, as a four lane divided highway. At Moeller Street, the roadway becomes a four lane highway with a center turn lane before reaching an at grade intersection with CSX railroad tracks. Thereafter, the road returns to four lane divided highway before a traffic light at US 41 in Schererville and passing under Norfolk Southern railroad tracks. After US 41, the original alignment of the Lincoln Highway leaves US 30 and continues along the same route as old State Road 330 (SR 330). US 30 begins to curve towards the southeast, still as a four lane divided highway. The highway has a traffic light at SR 55, heading east as the roadway enters Merrillville, where the route becomes a six lane divided highway and has an interchange at Interstate 65 (I 65). At Colorado Street in Merrillville, the road narrows back to a four lane divided highway.

The Lincoln Highway was planned in 1913 to run west to east across Indiana, including to South Bend and Fort Wayne. In 1915, the highway opened and passed through downtown Fort Wayne on its route through Indiana, and was assigned the designation of Main Market route number 2 in 1917. Further designations saw the route become SR 2 from the Illinois state line to Valparaiso, SR 44 Valparaiso to Fort Wayne and SR 2 from Fort Wayne to the Ohio state line. In the early 1920s, the Lincoln Highway was moved south between Valparaiso and Fort Wayne, to what is now known mostly as Old US 30, passing through Plymouth and Warsaw. A section of US 30 in Dyer known as the "ideal section" of the Lincoln Highway was opened in 1923 and rebuilt in the 1990s. In 1924, the sections of the road that were part of the original Lincoln Highway was paved, followed by the paving of the rest of US 30, which was commissioned in 1926. In 1927, a small realignment between Hanna and SR 29 (current US 35) took place. During the 1950s, US 30 in Fort Wayne was rerouted to a "circumurban" highway that was built along portions of the alignments of Beuter Road and California Road, to bypass most of Fort Wayne. This route, later renamed Coliseum Boulevard since it passes directly by the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, quickly became a congested urban highway in its own right as it was not built to freeway standards. In 1998, US 30 in Fort Wayne was rerouted onto I 69 and I 469, becoming a true controlled access freeway bypass for most of Fort Wayne and New Haven on the north and east side of the two cities. The old Coliseum Boulevard routing was assigned the SR 930 designation as a result, when local officials refused to let INDOT fully decommission the route and turn responsibility for it over to the cities or the county.