Quote Originally Posted by bombermwc View Post
Hang on there, you're saying that someone was looking to take turnpikes and turn them in to 240? That means free road, NOT turnpike.
This is incorrect. An interstate shield merely means that the road has been approved by AASHTO and FHWA to be part of the Eisenhower Interstate System. There are a number of prerequisites to get this approval, but they all have to do with the design of the road (i.e. no intersections, must meet standards for clearance and minimum lane widths, etc.).

Toll roads have been a part of the Interstate System since its inception. The Turner and Will Rogers turnpikes in Oklahoma, the Kansas Turnpike, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and others were all pre-existing toll roads incorporated into the Interstate System in 1956. Since the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, there is no longer any special Interstate-exclusive construction or maintenance funding mechanism, so any funding source can be used to build an Interstate.