Portal:U.S. roads/Selected article/March 2010

Route 25 west at Exit 2 and the Glen Charlie Road overpass in Wareham

Route 25 is a numbered state highway located in Plymouth County and Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The route is a nominally east–west freeway for its entire length. An eastward continuation of Interstate 495 (I-495), Route 25 provides freeway access to Cape Cod. The route's western terminus is at a trumpet interchange with I-495 and I-195 in Wareham. The route has three numbered interchanges along its 10.0-mile (16.1 km) length before terminating at the northern end of the Bourne Bridge in Bourne; the mainline of Route 25 continues across the bridge and over the Cape Cod Canal as Route 28 south.

Prior to 1982, the Route 25 designation was also given to a segment of what is now I-495 from Raynham to the interchange with I-195 in Wareham. The freeway was redesignated as I-495 in various stages during the 1970s and 1980s, eventually reducing Route 25 to a 2.5-mile (4 km) segment that continued eastward from I-495 to the modern location of Exit 2 in Downtown Wareham. Construction of an eastern continuation of Route 25 to the Bourne Bridge was delayed for nearly three decades due to property disputes and environmental concerns, but the final 7.5-mile (12 km) segment opened in 1987. The freeway was originally planned to continue over the Bourne Bridge into Cape Cod, but this plan was abandoned by the Massachusetts Highway Department in the late 1970s.

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