| Puerto Rico Highway System | |
|---|---|
    Highway shields for primary, urban primary, secondary and tertiary sections of PR-1 | |
 | |
| Highway names | |
| Interstates | Interstate PRnn (PRI-nn) (unsigned) |
| Commonwealth | Puerto Rico Highway nn (PR-nn) |
| System links | |
Puerto Rico has approximately 14,400 kilometers (8,900 mi)[1] of national, forest and municipal roads. The highways serve the more than 3 million residents, and 3-4 million tourists who visit each year.
Puerto Rico's territorial highway system is divided into four networks called primary, urban primary, secondary (inter-municipal), and tertiary (local). As a road or highway changes from being part of one network type to another network type, it maintains its same number but is then marked with a corresponding shield. The National Highway System roads are maintained by the Puerto Rico Department of Transportation and Public Works (Spanish: Departamento de Transportación y Obras Públicas, or DTOP).
Puerto Rico's Interstate Highways, or the Puerto Rico Highway Program (PRHP), which are not signed, are partially funded by the US federal government, as Puerto Rico's citizens pay federal taxes. At one time, Puerto Rico was treated as a state for the remittance of federal-aid highway funds, but with TEA-21, a legislative act, "Puerto Rico no longer receives a share of the apportioned Federal-aid highway funds. TEA-21 established a new highway program for Puerto Rico, and authorized $110 million from the Highway Trust Fund for this program for fiscal years 1998-2003."[2] More recently, for fiscal years 2016–2020, the FAST Act continues to authorize $158 million annually to the PRHP and $42 million to the Territorial Highway Program.[3][4]
The Forest Highways in Puerto Rico are maintained by the United States Forest Service. These are within the El Yunque National Rain Forest, near Río Grande, Puerto Rico.
Finally, the "municipal roads" go through, and are maintained by, the 78 municipalities of Puerto Rico. Municipalities are responsible for maintaining the roads within their jurisdictions, unsigned roads. The roads within municipalities have street names and street signs, not highway names with shields. There have been memorandums of agreement between the DTOP and the municipalities on road maintenance and also disagreements over who is the responsible entity for a road's maintenance.
- ^ Autoridad de Carreteras y Transportación (22 December 2004). "Guias para la Selección e Instalación de Rotulos de Orientacion (Suplemento al MUTCD 2003)" (PDF) (in Spanish). Departamento de Transportación y Obras Públicas. p. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 November 2009. Retrieved 5 January 2015.
- ^ Federal Highway Administration [bare URL PDF]
- ^ "PRHP - Federal-aid Programs - Federal-aid Programs and Special Funding". Federal Highway Administration.
- ^ http://prltap.org/eng/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/E.Matias-PRHP-_-THP.pdf [bare URL PDF]