Direction:

North/South

Southern Terminus:

Maryland-Delaware state line

Northern Terminus:

DE 1 in Middletown

Distance:

11.92 miles

Counties:

New Castle

Signed:

Yes

US 301 is a north/south route extending from Sarasota, Florida, to Newark, Delaware. The section in Delaware is a relatively short toll highway. It enters the state from Maryland south of Middletown. It runs diagonally through the Middletown area to the DE 1 toll highway, merging in just south of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. US 301 has only a single cashless tolling gantry along the highway itself, just north of the border with Maryland, before any of the exits. Motorists entering the northbound lanes or exiting the southbound lanes at any point north of there pass through gantries on the ramps, where they are charged a lower toll.

The US 301 toll highway in Delaware is one of the most recent additions to the highway network in this region of the country, having opened to traffic in 2019. As a result, it has always had cashless tolling and milepost exit numbers. There were never any tollbooths or sequential exit numbers. Prior to the construction of the toll highway, US 301 followed Middletown Warwick Road and Summit Bridge Road in Delaware, ending at Pulaski Highway (US 40) and South College Avenue (DE 896) in Newark. The old alignment was multiplexed with DE 299, DE 71, and DE 896 for segments that together comprised almost all of its length. DE 299 has been rerouted along a new alignment of Warwick Road just west of the toll highway in the area south of exit 2. However, north of exit 2, the old alignment is essentially unchanged except for the removal of the US 301 designation.