The tree-based routing approach has been known as an efficient method for node mobility management and data packet transmission between two long-distance parties; however, its parameter adjustment must balance control overhead against the convergence speed of topology information according to node mobility. Meanwhile, location-based routing works more efficiently when the distance between the source and destination is relatively short. Therefore, this paper proposes a roadside unit (RSU) based hybrid routing protocol, called RSU-HRP that combines the strengths of both protocols while offsetting their weaknesses. In RSU-HRP, the tree construction is modified to take into account the link and route quality to construct a robust and reliable tree against high node mobility, and an optimized broadcast algorithm is developed to reduce control overhead induced by the advertisement message periodically sent from a roadside unit. In addition, the two routing methods are selectively used based on the computed distance in hops between a source and a destination. Simulation results show that RSU-HRP far outperforms TrafRoute in terms of packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, and control overhead in both Vehicle-to-Infrastructure and Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication models.