From 1928 to 1931, State Route 503, a state highway from Portsmouth via Churchland and Belleville to the private approach road south of the Nansemond River, was added to the state highway system. U.S. Route 17 was moved onto this alignment (from one of the ferries) by 1932, and still uses it today. State Route 258, now part of U.S. Route 258, was extended over the Benns Church approach and bridge by late 1943 to reach the new Mercury Boulevard. Thus all approaches had numbers at the time of the state takeover in 1949. In 1951, State Route 32 was extended from Suffolk over the bridge to end in Newport News, completely overlapped with other routes, "to facilitate the routing of traffic over the James River Bridge System, between points north of Newport News and south of Suffolk".