Interstate 85 (I-85): Montgomery to Petersburg, Miles and Safety

How long is I-85?

FHWA's Route Log lists I-85 at 631.29 miles as of January 2026. North Carolina has the longest piece at 203.97 miles and Virginia the shortest at 69.12. Georgia has 171.75 miles, South Carolina 106.28 and Alabama 80.17.

Wikipedia and Interstate Guide both give 666.05 miles end to end, 34.76 more than the federal table. Nearly all of the gap is in Georgia and North Carolina. The Route Log's overlap notes list 8.00 miles of I-85 on I-75 and 1.21 miles on I-285 in Georgia, plus 31.51 miles on I-40 in North Carolina. I-85's own rows appear to leave those miles out: its North Carolina row is 27.26 miles below the reference figure of 231.23, and its Georgia row is 8.15 below 179.90.

Adding the 40.72 shared miles back gives 672.01, which is the mileage this page uses for crash rates. In Alabama and Virginia the federal and reference figures differ by less than half a mile, and South Carolina's 106.28 matches exactly.

Where I-85 starts and ends

I-85 begins at I-65 in Montgomery, Alabama, and ends at a trumpet interchange with I-95 and US 460 in Petersburg, Virginia, near Richmond.

Between those points it serves Auburn-Opelika, Atlanta, Greenville, Spartanburg, Charlotte, Greensboro and Durham. Much of the way it follows an older US highway. US 80 is its companion from Montgomery to Tuskegee, and US 29 takes over from Tuskegee through Atlanta, Greenville and Charlotte to Greensboro. From there I-85 tracks US 70 to Durham, then US 15 and US 1 to Petersburg. It crosses into South Carolina over Lake Hartwell near Lavonia, Georgia.

Interstate junctions along I-85

Entries run southwest to northeast, from I-65 in Montgomery to I-95 in Petersburg. In Atlanta, I-85 shares the Downtown Connector with I-75 and meets I-20 in the city. I-26 near Spartanburg is the only South Carolina entry. North Carolina has the longest run of entries: I-77 in Charlotte, I-74 near Archdale, I-73 in Greensboro and then I-40 twice, because the two routes share pavement from Greensboro to Hillsborough. Virginia has no Interstate junction until the end. Loops and spurs such as I-285 and I-485 are not in this list; they appear under the auxiliary routes below.

Fatal crashes on I-85

From 2020 to 2024, 535 people died in 492 fatal crashes on the I-85 mainline, about 107 a year. That comes to 15.9 deaths per 100 route miles a year, about two thirds above the Interstate network average of 9.5, and I-85 ranks 6th of the 56 routes long enough to rank. The worst year was 2021, with 126 deaths. The other four years fell between 98 and 108, and 2024 ended at 102.

Georgia had both the highest rate on the route, 20.8, and the most deaths, 188. Three metro Atlanta counties account for 107 of those: Fulton with 45, Gwinnett with 36 and DeKalb with 26. North Carolina was close behind on deaths with 184, at a rate of 15.6, led by Mecklenburg County around Charlotte with 41 and Cabarrus County, which includes Concord, with 25. Both rates count the stretches I-85 shares with other Interstates, so Georgia's uses 180.96 miles and takes in the Downtown Connector. Alabama (14.2) and South Carolina (14.1) came next, and Virginia had the lowest rate, 9.0, with 31 deaths.

Counties with the most I-85 crash deaths

Bridges on I-85

The 2025 National Bridge Inventory lists 485 bridges carrying the I-85 main line, with a median year built of 1969. Fifteen rate Poor, about 3.1 percent, while 185 rate Good and 285 Fair. North Carolina has the most bridges, 157, and the most rated Poor, 7. Alabama has the highest share: 4 of its 77 bridges, about 5.2 percent. None of Georgia's 118 rate Poor.

In North Carolina, a $136 million realignment over the Yadkin River broke ground on September 29, 2010. Its new northbound bridge opened in May 2012 and the southbound bridge in March 2013. In Atlanta, on March 30, 2017, a fire in a storage area under the highway along Piedmont Road brought down part of the northbound lanes. Crews demolished and replaced the spans in both directions, and I-85 was open again through the area by mid-May 2017.

Tolls on I-85

FHWA's January 2023 toll inventory lists two facilities on I-85, both in Georgia and both run by the State Road and Tollway Authority. The I-85 Express Lanes run from Chamblee Tucker Road, just south of I-285 (milepost 94.2), to Old Peachtree Road (109.2), and an extension continues to Hamilton Mill Road (119.8). These are optional toll lanes next to the regular lanes, so a driver who stays out of them pays nothing between Montgomery and Petersburg.

GDOT turned the original 15.5 miles of carpool lanes into toll lanes on October 1, 2011, and opened the $178 million extension on November 3, 2018. Rates appear on electronic message signs along the road. The miles in the table are FHWA's lengths for each facility, 15.04 and 10.53, and they don't line up exactly with the milepost ranges.

I-85 auxiliary routes

Eight three-digit routes carry I-85's number, in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina; Alabama and Virginia have none. Two numbers are used twice in different states. I-185 is a 49.65-mile spur to Columbus, Georgia, and a separate 16.40-mile road near Mauldin-Simpsonville, South Carolina. I-285 is the 62.65-mile Atlanta beltway and also a 23.25-mile route in North Carolina serving Lexington and Winston-Salem. I-485 circles Charlotte for 65.62 miles, and I-585 in Spartanburg is the shortest at 2.25 miles. I-985 to Gainesville opened in October 1969 as the I-85 Connector, SR 365, and was renumbered I-985 in 1984.

How I-85 was built and rerouted

The I-85 number dates to August 14, 1957. Georgia built its share between September 1951 and December 1979, and its 67 miles from Suwanee to the South Carolina line were complete by November 5, 1965, the first Interstate link linking Atlanta to a neighboring state. In Alabama, the Auburn-Opelika bypass was the first piece finished.

Several cities later had I-85 rebuilt or moved. Atlanta replaced the cloverleaf at I-285 near Doraville with the Tom Moreland Interchange, known as Spaghetti Junction, between January 1983 and July 1987. Spartanburg's new alignment opened on August 31, 1995, and the old road became Business Loop I-85. Greensboro's $160 million bypass opened on February 22, 2004, rerouting I-85 away from the I-40 interchange known as "Death Valley," and a $210 million reconstruction through Durham finished in February 2008.

The southern end may shift. The first phase of the Montgomery Outer Loop, planned as a southern bypass for I-85 traffic, opened on January 26, 2016, but later phases had stalled for lack of money as of 2023. On October 30, 2010, AASHTO approved the I-685 number for the current route into downtown Montgomery, pending FHWA approval. A proposed extension of I-85 west of Montgomery was folded into the I-14 corridor and is no longer being pursued.

I-85 traffic and road conditions

For wrecks and lane closures right now, use the five state traveler information sites below, listed from Alabama to Virginia. The crash figures above stop at 2024 and say nothing about today's traffic on the Downtown Connector or anywhere else.

I-85 questions