Interstate 640
Auxiliary Interstate Highway in Tennessee, United States
Interstate 640 (I-640) is an east–west auxiliary Interstate Highway in Knoxville, Tennessee. It serves as a bypass for I-40 around Downtown Knoxville and is also an alternative route for traffic passing between I-40 and I-75. All trucks carrying hazardous cargo through Knoxville are required to use I-640. It has a total length of 10.80 miles (17.38 km) and runs approximately three miles (4.8 km) north of downtown through the northern neighborhoods of Knoxville.
For its first 3 miles (4.8 km), I-640 has a concurrency with I-75, although exits along this segment are numbered according to the former's mileage. For the rest of its length, the Interstate maintains an unsigned concurrency with U.S. Route 25W (US 25W). Both of these highways were rerouted from their original alignments upon I-640's completion.
The route that is now I-640 was first planned by the city of Knoxville in 1945 and initiated by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, along with most of the Interstate Highway System. Initial construction work began in the early 1960s, and for many years, only two miles (3.2 km) of the highway was open to traffic. Work on the remainder of I-640 began in 1977, and the last section was completed in 1982.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Interstate 640” as auxiliary Interstate Highway in Tennessee, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2453658. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1945, 1956, 1977 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “Interstate 640” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.