Roads and Highways of the Pioneer Valley

Interstate 91

I-91 Information: Southern terminus is at the CT border in Longmeadow, MA. The northern terminus is at the Vermont border in Bernardston, MA. 55 of I-91's 300 miles are in Massachusetts.

History/Facts: I-91 is designed to be a high speed, limited access version of US 5, serving the exact same corridor - the two are almost inseperable. Coming through the shores of New Haven, up through the banks of the Connecticut River into Hartford, through the bustling downtown of Springfield, the rolling hills of Northampton, the green mountains of Vermont, and eventually continuing on into Canada to Montreal, Quebec as a Canadian Autoroute (the Canadian equivlaent of the Eisenhower Interstate System). I-91 in Springfield is currently under rehabilitation, as new reverse direction on/off ramps are being installed to prevent weaving amongst the closely spaced downtown exits.

See more history at Steve Anderson's BostonRoads.com.

Photos: Northbound / Southbound

Southbound: Franklin County / Hampshire County / Hampden County

The following seven pictures are courtesy of Arrow. A Greenfield exit BGS is here.

Hey, the next exit warning.

Greenfield Rotary exit.

Thanks for telling me this, sign. Sugarloaf is in Sunderland.

A view of Mount Holyoke from I-91.

Exit 18 warning sign.

Exit 18.

This is just past the US 5 interchange, and is the interchange of I-391 to Chicopee. This is a literal 90 degree turn, and if you don'd heed that 50 MPH speed limit on a slick day, you're toast.

I-91 BGSes are a mixture of gantries, ground level and hanging right-angle signs, like this. More often than not, this style of sign is used as opposed to gantries or ground-level signs.

That's right, it goes right from exit 11 to 8. There's more exits on the northbound side, and instead of using letters, MassHighway instead decides to just add and drop exit numbers as they please until they are in sync at exit 12 again.

There is a short four-lane section of I-91 just north of Springfield - when I-291 converges/spurs to when I-391 converges/spurs.

There's a small set of collector/distributor roads for the interchange between 91, 291, and US 20. This creates a small weaving problem for people coming on to 291, as there's traffic merging from another road inbetween 91's offramp and US 20's onramp - if people from that middle road are going to 91S (as you can with the collector roads), you have to be on your toes to avoid being sideswiped.

Past the offramp for I-291.

Yes, there's no exit 6. No exit 5 either. At least, not until things are done being reconstructed.

What a lonely gantry. It most likely was for exit 5.

The Naismith Basketballl Hall of Fame. It was rebuilt in 2002. I didn't get to take a picture of it from the highway, but before this there's the old hall, which has many panels that parallax together to make a panorama of famous basketball players playing the game in mid air. Truly a work of art. In this photo is the new Hall of Fame, which admittedly is a nice piece of architecture. If they demolish the old hall, I really will miss the panorama, it truly was an integral part of the (otherwise boring) southbound Springfield driving experience.

Exit 4 is also Broad street, if you choose to turn left instead of right. I also don't know why these two gantries are spaced so ridiculously close together.

Exit 4.

Exit 3 is a mishmash of collector roads.

There is no exit 2 southbound. This is also the end of the southbound multiplex with US 5.

These lightposts don't work. They're going to replace them or fix them before the end of 2006. Seriously.

Sorry for the quality on this one. It says "Bradley Int'l Airport Exit 40 11 miles." It's in a completely different font than the rest of I-91 signage, but it's still on the MA side, so it's their fault. This sign, most likely, has existed since the inception of I-91 from the CT border to the South End bridge.

Again, sorry for the poor quality. On the CT side, this would say "Longmeadow Mass." The exit is just shy of the MA border. I had a picture of the "Welcome To Connecticut" sign, but the glare made it unsalvageable. Suffice to say, it looks just like the one on the MA10/US202 page.

Done? Head Northbound or Return home.