| US 43 | |||
| Get started | mobile | ||
| End | greenhill | ||
| Length | 351 mi | ||
| Length | 565 km | ||
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According to act-test-centers, US 43 is a US Highway in the US state of Alabama. The road forms a long north-south route across the state, running from US 90 in the southern coastal city of Mobile through Tuscaloosa and Florence to the border with Tennessee. The route is 565 kilometers long.
Travel directions
US 43 at Reform.
The road begins in downtown Mobile on US 90, the east-west route parallel to Interstate 10. The road then heads north, through the docks area and passes by the end of Interstate 165. The road has 4 lanes and then runs through the northern suburbs, crossing Interstate 65, the highway from Mobile to the capital Montgomery and Birmingham.. US 43 is also a major 2×2 lane route north of Mobile for 135 kilometers. The road passes through a densely wooded area, parallel to the Mobile River, which soon splits into the Tombigbee and Alabama. There are mainly small villages on the route, and you hardly cross major roads. You pass the town of Jackson, and at the village of Grove Hill follows a grade separated junction with US 84, the road from Laurel in Mississippi to Dothan in southeastern Alabama. The area then becomes a bit more sloping, with low hills. At Thomasville, the 2×2 lane section ends, and the road continues north through Alabama’s backcountry.
About 60 kilometers away you reach the town of Demopolis. Here you cross the 2×2 US 80, the main route from Meridian in Mississippi to the capital Montgomery in the east. One crosses here the River Black Warrior, a tributary of the Tombigbee. About 40 kilometers further, at the village of Eutaw you reach the US 11, after which both tracks converge to Tuscaloosa, 55 kilometers to the north. Interstate 20, which is double – numbered with Interstate 59, is the highway from New Orleans and Jackson to Birmingham. The road then runs to the center of the 83,000-population city of Tuscaloosa, where it crosses Interstate 359.. The road then turns north and US 11 continues towards Birmingham. It also crosses US 82, the road from Columbus in Mississippi to Montgomery.
The road then continues to the north, where the landscape becomes more hilly, but still heavily forested. It then takes a while before you get to a larger town again, after 60 kilometers the larger village of Fayette follows, and 35 kilometers after that you reach Winfield, a small town, but where you cross the US 278, the road is then double numbered until to Hamilton. US 278 comes from Oxford in Mississippi and runs to Gadsden. It also crosses Interstate 22, the highway from Memphis to Birmingham.
About 30 miles north, you cross SR-24 at Russellville, SR-24 is a 2×2 main road to Decatur in the east. The US 43 itself has 2×2 lanes and leads to Florence, a city with 37,000 inhabitants and a small agglomeration of 140,000 inhabitants. It crosses SR-157, the 2×2 highway to Cullman in the southeast, and US 72, the 2×2 highway from Corinth in Mississippi to the town of Huntsville in the east. The wide Tennessee River, which is dammed up, also crosses here. Not far after Florence you reach the border with Tennessee. US 43 in Tennessee then continues to Columbia in the middle of that state.
History
According to liuxers, US 43 was added to the US Highways network in 1934 and originally ran only in Alabama, between Mobile in the south and Greenhill in the north, near the border with Tennessee. In 1939 US 43 was extended into Tennessee. The southern terminus was changed to Prichard, a suburb of Mobile, in 2001.
US 43 is the main north-south route in western Alabama, connecting three major cities, the southern city of Mobile, the city of Tuscaloosa, and the city of Florence. Although US 43 has never been replaced by an Interstate Highway, most of the road is single-lane. Longer stretches of four lanes are only found in the Florence region of the state’s northwest, as well as around Mobile and Tuscaloosa.
Region Mobile
Before I-65 was built, US 43 was the primary approach route into the city of Mobile from the north because the alternate route, US 31, entered the city east of Mobile Bay and thus served substantially different traffic flows. As early as the 1950s, a 25-kilometer stretch of US 43 between Mobile and Axis was widened to 2×2 lanes, which was extended another 25 miles in the early 1960s to the Mount Vernon area. Between 2007 and 2010, a large industrial complex of ThyssenKrupp was built along the US 43 near Calvert, for which a split-level connection to the US 43 was also realised.
In 1963-1964, the southernmost portion of US 43 in the Mobile Metropolitan Area was bypassed by Interstate 65, which was constructed west of US 43 here. However, it wasn’t until 1981 that I-65 became Mobile’s primary approach road from Montgomery and Birmingham, as the Mobile River junction was missing for a long time. Before that, traffic took I-65 and then US 31, or I-59 and US 43 to Mobile.
Southern Alabama
In southern Alabama, significant portions of US 43 have been widened into a 2×2 divided highway. Around 1960 a diversion of Grove Hill was realized. In the mid-1960s, the passage through Thomasville to 5 lanes with center turn lanewidened. In 1970-1971, US 43 between Jackson and Grove Hill was widened to 2×2 lanes. About 1974-1975 a second bridge was built over the Tombigbee River near Jackson, so that 2×2 lanes were also available here. In the late 1970s, the road between Grove Hill and Thomasville was widened to 2×2 lanes. In the 1980s, US 43 between McIntosh and Jackson was widened to 2×2 lanes. As a result, several longer stretches had been widened to 4 lanes, but there was no integral widening on the entire stretch through southern Alabama.
Central Alabama
In the middle of Alabama, US 43 has barely been upgraded. The road is double-numbered with US 11 between Eutaw and Tuscaloosa, and Interstate 59 runs parallel to it. A western bypass was built at Tuscaloosa in the 1990s to accommodate US 43 traffic, but US 43 still runs downtown over the 1974 Hugh R. Thomas Bridge over the Black Warrior River. In the 2000s, US 43 in the northern neighborhoods of Tuscaloosa was widened to a 5-lane highway with a center turn lane. North of Tuscaloosa, US 43 is mostly a single-lane road, although north of Fayette there is a 4-lane stretch on a narrow profile.
On November 12, 2021, a major project began to widen a 140-kilometer stretch between Thomasville and Tuscaloosa to 2×2 lanes. This largely included State Route 69, but also a stretch of US 43 between Thomasville and Linden, including a bypass of Linden.
Northern Alabama
In northern Alabama, more sections have been widened to 4 lanes. In about 2006, the bridge over the Bear Creek valley north of Hackleburg was widened to 2×2 lanes.
As early as the 1950s, the stretch from Russellville to Muscle Shoals was widened to 4 lanes on a narrow profile. In the second half of the 1960s, a six-mile stretch south of Russellville was also widened to 2×2 lanes on a much wider profile.
In 1939 the O’Neal Bridge was built over the Tennessee River between Sheffield and Florence. About 2000 a new bypass of both places was built, including a much wider bridge over the Tennessee River, which, however, did not become part of US 43.
In about 2008 a new bridge was built over Shoal Creek east of Florence. With six lanes, this bridge is much wider than the older cantilever bridges dating from 1925. These bridges are also part of US 72.
Between 2012 and 2020, US 43 between Florence and the border with Tennessee was widened in phases to 4 lanes, partly as a 2×2 divided highway and partly as a 5-lane road with a center turn lane. The last section to the Tennessee border was officially completed on August 11, 2020.
Traffic intensities
6,000 to 10,000 vehicles drive daily in the suburb of Prichard. Further north, this is higher in Satsuma with 23,000 vehicles. North of I-65, the intensities gradually decrease from 22,000 vehicles to 8,000 vehicles near Jackson and 2,500 to 5,000 vehicles between Jackson and Demopolis, with somewhat higher intensities in the small towns. Between Demopolis and Eutaw, 2,600 vehicles and 1,000 to 3,000 vehicles run between Eutaw and Tuscaloosa, because the I-20/I-59 runs parallel to it. In Tuscaloosa, the busiest point with 73,000 vehicles is on the bridge over the Black Warrier, a small river. North of Tuscaloosa, the intensities drop quickly to about 3,000 vehicles, before rising again to 6,000 vehicles at Fayette and 12,000 vehicles at Hamilton. Between Hamilton and Russellville are 3,000 to 4. 000 vehicles, increasing to 14,000 vehicles between Russellville and Muscle Shoals, this section is four lane. On the bridge over the Tennessee River to Florence, there are 30,000 vehicles, dropping to 5,900 vehicles on the Tennessee border.
