Interstate 89 (I-89): Bow, NH to the Quebec Line, Length and Crash Data

How long is I-89?

The FHWA Route Log, as of January 2026, gives I-89 191.11 miles: 60.86 in New Hampshire and 130.25 in Vermont, so Vermont holds a little over two thirds of the road. Wikipedia and Interstate Guide both print 191.12 miles, with 60.87 on the New Hampshire side. That hundredth of a mile is the only difference.

The Route Log books none of I-89's pavement to another Interstate, so the crash rates further down use the two state rows unchanged. Wikipedia lists two shared stretches, both in New Hampshire: NH 11 between exits 11 and 12, and NH 10 from exit 13 to exit 19. Those miles stay on I-89's rows.

Where I-89 starts and ends

I-89 begins in Bow, New Hampshire, at the interchange where I-93, the Everett Turnpike and NH 3A come together, just south of Concord. NH 3A meets the ramps at an ordinary intersection. The road ends 191 miles later at the Highgate Springs and St. Armand/Philipsburg border crossing in Vermont.

Heading north from Bow, the freeway passes Lebanon, crosses into Vermont at White River Junction and runs on to Montpelier and Barre. It then follows the Winooski River through the Green Mountains to Burlington, and St. Albans is the last city before Canada. Across the border, Quebec Route 133 carries traffic about three to four miles to the end of Autoroute 35 in Saint-Armand, by way of Philipsburg, and in March 2025 Quebec's Treasury Board removed the last 2.8 miles (4.5 km) of freeway to the border from the province's 2025 to 2035 infrastructure plan, citing budget cuts.

Interstate junctions along I-89

Read south to north, the list has only two other main Interstates. I-93 is at the very start in Bow, and I-91 crosses at White River Junction, which is exit 1 in Vermont. I-89's lone spur, I-189, branches off at exit 13 in South Burlington. Every other exit leads to US or state highways, and the last one is US 7 at Highgate Springs.

Fatal crashes on I-89

FARS records 33 fatal crashes on I-89 from 2020 through 2024, and they killed 37 people, about 7 a year. Over the route's 191 miles that is 3.9 deaths per 100 miles each year, well under half the Interstate average of 9.5. We rank 56 routes by this rate with 1st as the highest, and I-89 comes in 51st.

Vermont had 28 of the deaths on 130.25 miles, a rate of 4.3. New Hampshire had 9 on 60.86 miles, a rate of 3.0. Chittenden County, around Burlington, led with 10 deaths. Merrimack County in New Hampshire and Windsor County in Vermont had 7 each, Washington County, Vermont, had 5 and Franklin County had 3. The worst year was 2021, when 12 people died, up from 5 in 2020. The count then went to 9, dropped to 4 in 2023 and rose to 7 in 2024.

Counties with the most I-89 crash deaths

Bridges on I-89

The 2025 National Bridge Inventory lists 214 bridges on the I-89 main line, 121 in Vermont and 93 in New Hampshire. Nine are rated Poor, about 4 percent of the total: 5 on the New Hampshire side and 4 in Vermont. Of the rest, 132 rate Fair and 73 Good. The median bridge was built in 1966.

The road crosses the Connecticut River between Lebanon and White River Junction on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge. Interstate Guide says the original spans there date from 1966. A rebuild that began in September 2020, budgeted at $43.8 million and first due in September 2025, was in final paving in October 2026, with NHDOT aiming to finish by late November. It adds auxiliary lanes in both directions between exit 1 at I-91 and exit 20 at NH 12A.

Tolls on I-89

FHWA's inventory of toll facilities as of January 1, 2023 has no entry for I-89, so a trip from Bow to the Canadian border pays no tolls. Our route sources describe no tolled or priced lanes added on I-89 since then.

I-89 auxiliary routes

I-189 is the only three-digit route tied to I-89. It is 1.49 miles long and stays inside South Burlington, leaving I-89 at exit 13 and heading toward Burlington.

Building I-89, starting at Montpelier

Vermont opened the first piece on November 21, 1960, a 6.287-mile section between Montpelier and Middlesex, according to Interstate Guide. Extensions reached Waterbury on December 31 of that year and Bolton in November 1961. The Burlington area followed between 1962 and 1964 in short pieces through South Burlington, Winooski, Richmond and Colchester, and the stretch from Swanton to Highgate opened in 1965. New Hampshire's first section, from Warner to New London, opened in November 1967, and the rest of that state's mileage came about a year later.

Vermont kept its old sequential exit numbers and, by spring 2020, added milepoint numbers to the signs, so exit 22 at Highgate Springs is also milepoint exit 129. Between exits 9 and 10, metric-only distance signs stood until 2010, when the state swapped them for mileage signs. Wikipedia says the road's highest point was said to be in Brookfield, though the sign marking it came down in the late 1990s.

Work has kept going in Chittenden County. Exit 16 in Colchester became Vermont's first diverging diamond interchange when it opened to traffic on September 17, 2026. The I-89 number was also proposed for a second road. In May 2016 the North Carolina DOT proposed I-89 for a corridor from Raleigh to Hampton Roads, Virginia, and AASHTO approved I-87 for it instead.

I-89 traffic and road conditions

Winter storms, wrecks and lane closures on I-89 change by the hour, so check New England 511, which covers both New Hampshire and Vermont and is linked below.

I-89 questions