Interstate 10 (I-10): Route, States, Mileage and Safety Data

How long is I-10?

FHWA's Route Log gives I-10 2,457.62 miles as of January 2026, fourth among Interstates behind I-80, I-90 and I-40. Older references quote 2,460.34 miles, built from earlier editions of the same table.

Texas holds 878.76 of those miles, 36 percent of the route and more than any one state holds of any other Interstate. That figure is also the one most often disputed. Interstate Guide prints 881.21 miles, and the Texas Department of Transportation certifies 877.455 because it treats I-10 as broken where it shares pavement with I-35 in San Antonio. The exit numbers tell the same story: mile marker 880 in Orange, at the Louisiana line, is the highest exit number on any freeway in North America.

Where I-10 starts and ends

The western end is State Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, in Santa Monica. The eastern end is the junction with I-95 and US 17 in Jacksonville, Florida.

In between, I-10 is the main road through Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Mobile and Tallahassee. Between Lafayette and Baton Rouge it runs about 18 miles on bridges over the Atchafalaya Basin.

Interstate junctions along I-10

I-10 meets 18 other main Interstates, listed west to east. I-12 connects at both of its ends, in Baton Rouge and near Slidell, as a northern bypass of New Orleans. Texas has the most, with five.

Fatal crashes on I-10

Crashes on I-10's mainline killed 1,827 people from 2020 to 2024. The yearly count rose from 300 in 2020 to 402 in 2022, held near that level in 2023, then fell to 341. That works out to 14.9 deaths per 100 route miles each year, about half again the Interstate average of 9.5, and ninth highest among the 56 routes long enough to rank.

California's 241 miles are the deadliest part of the route, at 28.2 deaths per 100 miles a year, more than twice the rate in Texas. Maricopa County around Phoenix had the most deaths of any county on I-10, 143, followed by Riverside and Los Angeles counties in California and Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston. New Mexico's 164 desert miles had the lowest rate.

Counties with the most I-10 crash deaths

Bridges on I-10

The 2025 National Bridge Inventory counts 3,060 bridges on the I-10 main line, and 1,320 of them, more than two in five, are in Texas. Only 21 rate Poor. Louisiana has the most Poor ratings, 9 of its 312.

The Twin Span bridges across Lake Pontchartrain show what a storm can do to the route. Hurricane Katrina wrecked them in August 2005, and an $803 million replacement was finished in 2011.

Tolls on I-10

The main lanes of I-10 are free from end to end. FHWA's January 2023 inventory lists only two tolled facilities on it, both optional express lanes beside free lanes: the I-10 Express Lanes in Los Angeles County and the Katy Managed Lanes in Houston. San Bernardino County opened its own express lanes on I-10 in 2024, after that inventory date.

The Katy Freeway in Houston, where those managed lanes run, is up to 26 lanes wide counting frontage roads, the widest stretch of the route.

I-10 auxiliary routes

I-10 has eight three-digit spurs and loops. I-110 is the most repeated, with separate roads in five states from Los Angeles to Pensacola, and I-610 is a loop in Houston and a bypass in New Orleans.

How I-10 was finished

The last piece of I-10 to open was the Papago Freeway through downtown Phoenix, including the Deck Park Tunnel, on August 10, 1990. That completed the route from coast to coast.

The route still closes for events that have nothing to do with traffic. A pallet yard fire under the elevated freeway near downtown Los Angeles shut it on November 11, 2023, and it reopened eight days later.

I-10 traffic and road conditions

Road conditions change faster than any reference page can follow. For today's closures and crashes on I-10, use the traveler site for the state you are in, listed west to east.

I-10 questions