In America, we have a compulsion to rank things, perhaps as a cognitive aid to helping us wrap our minds around a topic. Top ten lists, March Madness, salary surveys, and all sorts of other competitions and studies help us determine who's number one and who are the losers.
Even highways are not immune to this: but the number of variables involved in comparing highways can lead to intractable disagreements unless you limit the discussion to such easily measured values as number of lanes or miles. Something as vaporous as "most prominent" or "most important" highway can't be determined to everyone's satisfaction.
Until now.
I developed a Perl script (which you can download) that assigns numerical values to various attributes of each 2-digit interstate highway. The end result: a ranking in decreasing order of prominence. The most important highway turns out to be Interstate 95 ("so easy to use, no wonder it's number 1!"). The beauty of this approach is that numbers don't lie (as Jim Rome fans say, "Scoreboard!") and the results are undisputable.
All kidding aside, the study is still flawed because I'm demanding that you accept my assumptions (see below) as golden: having attribute X is worth Y points, and so on. This rhetorical tactic is not all that uncommon in any sort of debate. However, you can download the Perl script, adjust the parameters as you see fit, and generate new results. The script first prints out the parameters, then lists how each interstate fared.
Here are the results from the Perl script without modifications. I-95 is the most important interstate, while Idaho's I-86 is the one least likely to be missed. Flame on!
Kurumi's Interstate Ranker Scoring: Each mile in length: 1 Each state occupied: 200 Each international border touched: 100 Each major 2di generated: 200 Each minor 2di generated: 100 Each major 2di intersected: 100 Each minor 2di intersected: 50 Each 3di it's a parent of: 150 Each 1,000,000 pop in metro areas served: 100 Include I-99: no 1. I-95: 14443 2. I-80: 13907 3. I-90: 12035 4. I-10: 10710 5. I-70: 7925 6. I-75: 7837 7. I-40: 7754 8. I-5: 6732 9. I-94: 6714 10. I-35: 6481 11. I-15: 6236 12. I-55: 4994 13. I-20: 4958 14. I-65: 4438 15. I-64: 4145 16. I-81: 4124 17. I-85: 3814 18. I-77: 3211 19. I-87: 3046 20. I-76e: 2943 21. I-78: 2894 22. I-29: 2653 23. I-25: 2509 24. I-57: 2431 25. I-84w: 2321 26. I-74: 2314 27. I-71: 2293 28. I-44: 2245 29. I-91: 2140 30. I-59: 2092 31. I-30: 2064 32. I-24: 1868 33. I-93: 1810 34. I-45: 1784 35. I-84e: 1743 36. I-96: 1742 37. I-79: 1739 38. I-69: 1660 39. I-26: 1511 40. I-88w: 1293 41. I-39: 1249 42. I-8: 1245 43. I-83: 1135 44. I-76w: 1035 45. I-37: 942 46. I-89: 938 47. I-4: 900 48. I-66: 876 49. I-17: 846 50. I-82: 843 51. I-86e: 800 52. I-16: 719 53. I-43: 692 54. I-72: 682 55. I-68: 614 56. I-49: 606 57. I-12: 535 58. I-88e: 531 59. I-19: 463 60. I-27: 424 61. I-97: 418 62. I-86w: 413