Wikipedia:WikiProject Lehigh Valley/FA/Previous

June 2007

Interstate 476 is a 132 mile long Interstate Highway, designated between Interstate 95 near Chester, Pennsylvania and Interstate 81 near Scranton, Pennsylvania, serving as the primary north-south Interstate corridor through eastern Pennsylvania. It consists of both the approximately 21 mile Mid-County Expressway, locally referred to as the "Blue Route," through the suburban Philadelphia counties of Delaware and Montgomery, and the 110 mile Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike connecting the Philadelphia metropolitan area with the Lehigh Valley, the Poconos, and the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area.

While proposed as early as 1929, the construction of the Mid-County Expressway through Delaware County, Pennsylvania was not completed until 1992 due to massive community and environmental opposition during the freeway revolts of the 1960s and 1970s, leading The Philadelphia Inquirer to dub it "the most costly, most bitterly opposed highway in Pennsylvania history."

Following the completion of the Mid-County Expressway, in 1996 the Interstate 476 designation was extended to include the entire length of the existing Northeast Extension. Since the extension, I-476 has been the longest auxiliary Interstate highway in the United States.