Adopt a Highway

When I was in America last year, I kept on seeing some weird signs on the sides of highways, but I just never bothered to find out what the signs meant. The signs said, “adopt a highway”. Why would someone want to adopt a highway? Well, now I finally found out what this strange adoption means.

The Adopt-a-Highway program, a.k.a. Sponsor-a-Highway program, is a promotional campaign that U.S. states, provinces and territories of Canada, and national governments outside North America have undertaken. The program encourages volunteers to keep a section of a highway free from litter. An organization is allowed to have its name posted on a sign in the section of the highways they maintain in exchange for keeping the road clean.

James Evans, an engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation, started the program in the 1980s. Evans saw trash flying out of a pickup truck bed, and since litter cleanup by the city was expensive, he sought the help of local groups to sponsor the cleaning of the highway. Quarterly cleanup cycles, volunteer safety training, the issuing of reflective vests and equipment, and the posting of adopt-a-highway signs started due to the efforts of Billy Black, a public information officer.

The first group to volunteer was the Tyler Civitan Club. In 1985, the club adopted two miles along U.S. Route 69. The program was very successful and it has spread to 49 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Japan.

Some states allow both Adopt-a-Highway and Sponsor-a-Highway programs. In both programs, an organization that takes care of the maintenance of the highway is allowed to post its name. The difference between these two is that while an adopting organization provides the volunteers who do the litter pickup, a sponsoring organization pays professional contractors to do the work. Sponsor-a-Highway program is more typical in highways with a lot of traffic due to safety concerns.