page_title: Roads and freeways in metropolitan Detroit
section_title: Freeways
hierarchical_section_title: Roads and freeways in metropolitan Detroit / Freeways
caption_attribution_description: Satellite image of the interchange at the confluence of I-96, I-696, I-275 and M-5 near Novi, Michigan.
context_page_description: The roads and freeways in metropolitan Detroit comprise the main thoroughfares in the region. The freeways consist of an advanced network of interconnecting freeways which include Interstate highways. The Metro Detroit region's extensive toll-free freeway system, together with its status as a major port city, provide advantages to its location as a global business center. There are no toll roads in Michigan.
  Detroiters may refer to freeways by the formal name more often where one has been designated rather than route number. Other freeways without formal names are known by the number such as I‑275 and M‑59. M‑53, while not officially designated may be locally referred to by its name "Van Dyke". Detroit area freeways are typically sunken below ground level to permit local traffic to pass over the freeway and for appearance.
  Following a historic fire in 1805, Judge Augustus B. Woodward devised a plan similar to Pierre Charles L'Enfant's design for Washington, D.C..
context_section_description: I-75 (known as the Walter P. Chrysler Freeway from Downtown Detroit to Pontiac in the north and Fisher Freeway though southern and central Detroit) is the region's main north–south route, serving Flint (and points north to Sault Ste. Marie), Pontiac, Troy, and Detroit, before continuing south (as the Detroit-Toledo and Seaway Freeways) to serve the Downriver communities and further south, many of the communities along the shore of Lake Erie, most notably Toledo, Ohio before continuing to Florida.
   I-94 (Edsel Ford Freeway & Detroit Industrial Freeway) runs east–west through Detroit and serves Ann Arbor to the west (where it continues to West Michigan and Chicago) and Port Huron to the northeast. The stretch of the current I‑94 freeway from Ypsilanti to Detroit was one of America's earlier limited-access highways. Henry Ford built it to link his factories at Willow Run and Dearborn during World War II. It also serves the North Access to the Detroit Metro Airport in Romulus. A portion was known as the Willow Run Expressway.
   I-96 runs east–west through Livingston, Oakland and Wayne counties and has its eastern terminus in downtown Detroit. The portion east of I‑275 is known and signed as the Jeffries Freeway, named for Edward Jeffries (a former mayor of Detroit); however, this portion of I‑96 was officially renamed by the state legislature as the Rosa Parks Memorial Highway in December 2005.
   I-275 runs north–south from I‑75 in the south to the junction of I‑96 and I‑696 in the north, providing a bypass through the western suburbs of Detroit. Originally intended to travel north 23 miles (originally as I‑275 and later changed to M‑275) from the I‑696/I‑96/I‑275/M‑5 junction to the I‑75/US 24 (Dixie Hwy.) junction in Waterford Twp., where I‑75's median was significantly widened in its initial construction to accommodate the future interchange. The planned M‑275 has essentially been scrapped, with the northward extension of M‑5 utilizing the original M‑275 right-of-way but terminating after just six miles at Pontiac Trail in West Bloomfield.
   I-375 is a short spur route in downtown Detroit, an extension of the Chrysler Freeway.
   I-696 (Walter P. Reuther Freeway) runs east–west from the junction of I‑96 and I‑275 on the west to I‑94 on the east, providing a route through the northern suburbs of Detroit. Taken together, I‑275 and I‑696 form a beltway around Detroit. The Lodge Freeway was previously designated a Business Spur of I-696 before it was redesignated as part of US 10 and later as M-10.
   M-5 This freeway begins as the stub left over from the Brighton-Farmington Expressway after Interstate 96 was rerouted to the Jeffries. Originally designated as I‑96 and later as an extension of M‑102. From 1994 to 2002, it was extended north as the Haggerty Connector.
   M-8 is the Davison Freeway. Opened in 1942, this was the first modern depressed limited-access freeway in America. Originally supposed to run as a freeway from I‑96 east to Mound Rd. and then north to join the already-existing M‑53 freeway at Van Dyke Ave. in Sterling Heights.  In 1996, the Davison was closed for a year and a half to reconstruct it to Interstate Highway standards with an additional through travel lane and a wider left shoulder for improved safety and traffic handling as well as a new interchange with Woodward Avenue. The reconstructed freeway was reopened 18 months later on October 8, 1997
   M-10 (John C. Lodge Freeway) runs largely parallel to I‑75 from Downtown Detroit to Wyoming Ave., where it turns northwesterly and largely maintains this trajectory through the I‑696/Telegraph Rd. interchange in Southfield and then continues as a surface boulevard as Northwestern Highway, terminating at Orchard Lake Rd. in Farmington Hills.
   M-14 runs east–west from I‑275 in Livonia to Ann Arbor.
   M-39 (Southfield Freeway) runs north–south from Southfield to Allen Park. North of 9 Mile Road and south of I‑94, the freeway ends and continues as Southfield Road into Birmingham and Ecorse respectively.
   M-53 (Christopher Columbus Freeway from Sterling Heights to Washingt
caption: Satellite image of the terminus at I‑275 nicknamed the "mixing bowl"
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