| Friday, January 25, 2002 |
19:36 - Finally We Join the Union...
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California is the last state in the country that hasn't adopted the convention of numbered freeway exits. And, "thankfully" (according to a guy on NPR who talked about it), that's about to change.
Some states number their exits sequentially from a convenient border, which gets very messy when new exits are added ("Take Exit 43. No, not the one for Saunders Street, the Exit 43 down by the park. Yeah, 43b. Or is that 43c?") But states with more of an evident brain number exits based on mileage. It's possible by that scheme to get the same kind of problem if you have exits really close together, but it's a whole lot more sensible. That's how California's going to do it.
It seems cool that this is going to happen-- it'll certainly reduce a fair amount of navigational confusion. But I don't know if I'm the only one who thinks this, but I think there's a certain amount of geographical romanticism in not numbering exits. "Between Lawrence Expressway and Wolfe Road" sounds so much better on traffic reports than "Between exits 14 and 16". It's also got something to do with a certain amount of pride in names like "Bayshore Freeway" and "Montague Expressway" rather than austere numbers.
Ah well-- I guess I'll get used to being like the rest of the country Sigh. Oh, but we do have one consolation: the exits on Interstate 5, which start at the Mexican border and continue for 809 miles to the Oregon border, will boast the highest-numbered mileage-based exit in the country: 796, at the far-northern town of Hilt.
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