Portal:Michigan highways/Selected article/February 2016

US 12 is a US Highway that runs for 210 mi between New Buffalo and Detroit as a state trunkline highway and Pure Michigan Byway. On its western end, the highway is mostly a two-lane road that runs through the southern tier of counties roughly parallel to the Indiana state line. It forms part of the Niles Bypass, a four-lane expressway south of Niles in the southwestern part of the state, and it runs concurrently with the Interstate 94 (I-94) freeway around the south side of Ypsilanti in the southeastern. In between Coldwater and the Ann Arbor area, the highway angles northeasterly and passes the Michigan International Speedway. East of Ypsilanti, US 12 follows a divided highway routing on Michigan Avenue into Detroit, where it terminates at an intersection with Cass Avenue. When US 12 was designated in Michigan on November 11, 1926, it ran along a more northerly course. It entered from Indiana as it does now, but it followed the Lake Michigan shoreline farther north to Benton Harbor–St. Joseph before turning eastward to run through Kalamazoo, Battle Creek and Jackson. In the Ann Arbor area, it followed a more northerly path into Detroit before terminating downtown. In the 1940s and 1950s, sections of the highway were converted into expressways and freeways. Starting in 1959, these freeway segments were renumbered as part of I-94, and in January 1962, US 12 was shifted to replace US 112. Since 1962, the highway has remained relatively unchanged aside from minor truncations in the city of Detroit. US 112 previously had two business loops, both of which were renumbered Bus. US 12 in 1962. In 2010, the Niles business loop was decommissioned, but the one in Ypsilanti remains. One section of the former US 112 was renumbered US 112S for a few years in the 1930s. (more...)

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