Since I spent many hours in the car as I was growing up, I have
always had an interest in roads. When I was in 7th grade, I
happened to find Steve Alpert's website, alpsroads.net
(when I found it, it was still hosted as an MIT student
page!). From his website, I entered the rabbit hole of many
other road-themed websites, which I've listed further down on this
page.
I have been a member of the road enthusiast ("roadgeek")
community for several years. I am a member of the AARoads
Forum and several Facebook groups describing the
topic. I've attended two road meets (Wilmington, DE 2021;
Philadelphia, PA 2022), where I've met members of this community.
In August 2019, I started an Instagram account called Roadways of
Delaware (@roadwaysofdelaware). In October 2020, I
purchased a dashcam and started creating road trip videos in a
similar fashion to FreewayJim, FreewayBrent, JMV FRVA, and
others. I periodically create new videos, aiming for at
least one video per month, and upload them to my YouTube channel,
also titled Roadways of
Delaware.
Given the trips I've taken over the years, I've covered numerous
locations throughout the northeast and mid-Atlantic, including
places relatively far from Delaware, like Wytheville, VA,
Wheeling, WV, Hartford, CT, and Portland, ME. The videos are
organized into different playlists, both per-region and per-trip
(for long-distance trips). I've created a map detailing
where my videos have covered, shown below.
I have been slowly performing research on Delaware's road history, particularly related to my two areas of interest: cancelled highways and signage. I've read documents from the Delaware Public Archives and seen historical plans publicly released on DelDOT's website, which have increased my knowledge of the topic. I've learned about some long-cancelled projects in Delaware along the way, including:
I hope to write and publish details of my findings, as I have always been interested in these "what would have been" plans.
Below are some websites that I've found interesting over the years. There are many, many more.