Where I-81, I-84 and I-380 Meet: A Driver's Guide to Scranton's Crossroads
Three interstates converge northeast of Scranton, and the President Biden Expressway ties them to downtown. Here is how the Electric City's highway system fits together.
Scranton's highway geography is a knot tied in Dunmore. Interstate 81, the valley's spine, runs along the city's eastern and northern edges toward Binghamton and Wilkes-Barre. Just northeast of the city, I-84 heads east toward New England and I-380 splits southeast toward I-80 and the Poconos — three interstates meeting at the top of the Lackawanna Valley, with the Casey Highway, US-6, carrying traffic across the valley's north side.
Downtown connects through the President Biden Expressway, the freeway spur that climbs from central Scranton to I-81, and through the North Scranton Expressway carrying US-11 toward Green Ridge and the Abingtons. On the west, Interstate 476, the Turnpike's Northeast Extension, skirts the city toward Clarks Summit and Allentown. The system's logic is radial: the interstates orbit, the expressways penetrate, and the old arterials — Wyoming Avenue, Main Avenue, Moosic Street — carry the neighborhood load the freeways never took.
Each leg has its weather and its hour. I-81's grades through the valley's notch ice early and carry heavy truck traffic at all hours; the I-380 Pocono run is the region's most weather-exposed drive in a northwest-flow snow event; and the downtown expressway concentrates the morning peak into a few ramps where a single stall backs up the system.
The practical Scranton rules are the valley rules: learn which of the three interstates your trip actually needs, because they diverge fast; treat Moosic Street's hill — the steep grade made famous by a runaway banana truck in 1965 — with the caution its history earned; and in winter, check conditions for the ridge you are crossing, not the street you are leaving.