Originally Posted by mev

I've found that this isn't too hard to deal with.

On a really long route of a thousand miles or more, the "avoid highways" often seems to pick a route with US highways that just happens to not include the interstates.

When one is more constrained, e.g. essentially shorter segments but one might catch a bit of an interstate, then when the "avoid highways" ends up with a big extra loop or segment - one looks at the specific details and just does a routing on the interstate for a short segment.

To make a concrete example: if one wanted to travel from Boise to Salt Lake City - then the most direct auto route would be I-84 (342 miles). The "avoid highways" route roughly follows this but seems to jump on a combination of frontage roads and weird loops (403 miles) - and also gives an alternative of US 20/26/91 (469 miles).

I would probably be inclined towards the US 20/26/91 route while also jumping on I-84 much of the way to Mountain Home and picking some more local alternatives from Ogden. That is all for an area with fairly sparse non-interstate alternatives. If you are instead doing something a bit more askew from the interstates and a bit further e.g. Boise to West Yellowstone, MT than you get a fairly reasonable combination and still might jump on I-84 initially but otherwise get mostly where you want to go on major US highways.



My experience with US highways in the western US has generally been more favorable than those similar US highways in the eastern US. For example, I remember getting on brief parts of US 50 in Kansas or US 64 further east or US 61 in Mississippi and thinking these really aren't pleasant travels. In contrast, I've had more favorable experiences in the US west (outside huge urban areas) with the US highway system.