State Road 933: Coined April 1998, and Why

1997–1998 — the number that exists because a county said no

State Road 933 is not a renumbering of U.S. 31; it is the state number Indiana put on the orphan of U.S. 33. The mechanism is documented end to end. On 25 April 1997 AASHTO approved truncating U.S. 33 to U.S. 20 in Elkhart, on a joint request of the Michigan and Indiana departments of transportation; signage was changed a year later, in April 1998 (the operative truncation date in the road record is 5 April 1998). Indiana removed U.S. 33 north of U.S. 20 in 1998, and the road was to pass to local jurisdiction. Elkhart County accepted its portion. St. Joseph County did not — "and the road became SR 933 within that area." The dated newspaper settler stands in the South Bend Tribune of 18 April 1998, page A6: "Portion of U.S. 33 is now Indiana 933." The state tried again in 2004 to eliminate 933 and the county refused again; the designation stands extant, 1998 to the present. A prediction that the portion north of Angela Boulevard would leave the state system in mid-2018, printed in a 2018 Tribune item, did not happen. The route whole is longer than its Roseland leg suggests: 16.83 miles, from Lincoln Way and Ash Road in Osceola, on the St. Joseph–Elkhart county line, through Mishawaka and downtown South Bend, and north through Roseland to M-51 at the Michigan state line — the east–west Lincolnway leg and the north–south Dixie Way leg are one route. Michigan completed the junction the same month, extending M-51 to the state line in April 1998. The Roseland leg is the northern north–south portion, roughly mile 10.12 to the terminus at 16.83.

Sources: Michigan Highways, U.S. 33 (the AASHTO action of April 25, 1997 and the county-refusal passage, verbatim); Roadfan (the April 1998 signage change and April 5, 1998 truncation date); South Bend Tribune, April 18, 1998, p. A6 (the dated headline); the SR 933 route record (16.83-mile course; M-51's origin 1971 as the former M-40).