[HN Gopher] Sorry, wrong number
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Sorry, wrong number
Author : scrlk
Score : 71 points
Date : 2024-05-18 11:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.roads.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.roads.org.uk)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Road numbering enthusiasts are not unique to the UK. But as with
| train spotters, UK road geeks are more enthusiastic than their US
| counterparts. And the hobby is very rare in Canada, that country
| only having the one big road.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Numbered_Highway...
| goosedragons wrote:
| Define "one big road". Yes, Canada only has one major highway
| that spans the country but there's roads longer than the isle
| of Great Britain (e.g. Alberta Highway 2).
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| This is a beautifully pedantic post.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| This is what I imagine Adrian Monk would write blog posts
| about.
| fsckboy wrote:
| hate to be pedantic, but while it's a beautiful post, it's not
| pedantic, it points out how these highway numbering decisions
| will negatively affect people, congestion, and traffic flow,
| which were why the numbering scheme was created in the first
| place.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| The author asserts that these decisions will have a negative
| impact, but one may disagree with that assertion -- and as it
| turns out, I think they're wrong.
|
| Even the cases of B roads inheriting the number of the A
| roads they replaced makes as much (if not more) sense as a
| motorway inheriting that number. Knowing that a road used to
| be the main road before the bypass was built is useful
| information!
|
| Around East Lothian, where I'm based, old alignments of the
| A1 are still A roads: the A199 and A198.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| There might be more important things to write to your local
| authority about.
| jonah wrote:
| I grew up along US Highway 62 - which I found our recently is the
| "only east-west United States Numbered Highway that connects
| Mexico and Canada".[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_62
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I always find it a problem when US roads use a N/S/E/W
| designation based on their _overall_ trajectory rather than the
| local direction.
|
| For example, we live south of Santa Fe, but to tell people how
| to get here [0] we have to say "take I25 North" (because
| heading out of Santa Fe and away from Albuquerque, the road
| heads south east, even though its ultimate destination
| (Buffalo, WY) is clearly to the north. The road signage is
| consistent, but if you also have a reasonably strong sense of
| direction, your head can be asking "why am I going south on a
| north-labelled road" or a variant thereof.
| stevage wrote:
| I find it interesting that the direction seems to be so
| intrinsic and important in the US but here is Australia we
| don't have it at all. Just numbers, but mostly people know
| and use the highway names and refer to the town they are
| driving towards.
| xeromal wrote:
| I have the same problem with the 101 in Los Angeles. It's a
| North South highway that goes east to west for a few miles
| where I live except that it's actually labeled east to west
| too locally so you confuse yourself from time to time
| halfcat wrote:
| It gets even worse.
|
| In Texas, I35 runs north and south. But it also splits at one
| point, creating I35 east, and I35 west, so if you're going
| from Austin to Dallas you take I35 east northbound.
| jonah wrote:
| Where I live now there are a few East-West roads and due to the
| topography, no North-South roads connecting them. All the side
| roads off these E-W roads were lettered. Problem is, there is an
| e.g. "I" road off of each E-W road which makes giving people
| directions or emergency response complicated. So, at some point,
| some of the side-roads were re-named to be numbers. So now one of
| the "I"s is 19, etc. Problem is, in AT&Ts system the mappings
| from landline number to address still uses the old lettering
| system and apparently cannot be changed - and this feeds into the
| emergency dispatch system. So, if you live on one of these roads
| and call 911 on your home phone, they'll have a difficult time
| finding you and there's a chance they'll go to the right address
| on the wrong road first... Ugh.
| 13of40 wrote:
| The place I live has a fairly simple grid system with numbered
| avenues that run north-south and numbered streets perpendicular
| to them.
|
| Avenue and Street differentiate those pretty well, and they
| also add NE/NW/etc. but use it as a prefix for avenues and a
| suffix for streets, so "NE 123rd Avenue" vs. "123rd Street NE".
|
| Short sections are usually called "Place" with the number of
| the nearest avenue or street, but they copy the suffix/prefix
| along with the number.
|
| As a result you can find for example, "NE 36th Place" and "36th
| Place NE" about a quarter mile from each other. Since the house
| number is based on the cross street, you can in theory end up
| with doppelganger addresses where the only difference is the
| position of "NE".
| petecooper wrote:
| In a similar vein: https://www.pathetic.org.uk
| andrewaylett wrote:
| To add to the pedantry -- the Scottish system re-uses the number
| with an "M" instead of an "A" when a new motorway replaces the
| old road on a new alignment, but if the existing alignment is
| upgraded then (as in the rest of Great Britain) the A road
| sometimes keeps its number with a "(M)" suffix. And it's not
| necessarily the case that the old road is renumbered, either.
|
| So we have the M74 and A74(M) which are different pieces of the
| same road. There are bits of the A90 interspersed with bits of
| the M90, although the bulk of the A road is north of all the
| motorway and the motorway has in many places a different
| alignment to the original road. And the M8 is the main road
| connecting Glasgow and Edinburgh, replacing the A8, which is a
| different road with only segments remaining.
| shever73 wrote:
| This is why I love HN. Something I'd never thought about before
| reading this article is now of vital importance to me!
| jjgreen wrote:
| Fans of UK road-numbering may enjoy Billy Bragg's A13
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McCHIK_yBJo
| timmb wrote:
| The UK's road numbering system feels like it was designed for the
| convenience of the people in Whitehall filing their maps rather
| than those using the roads. Giving adjacent roads very similar
| numbers is the maximally confusing thing to do. For my brain at
| least - I have to choose between the M73, M74 or M77 and I often
| get it wrong. It would be easier if they'd reversed all the
| numbers to put the zone at the end - I feel M37, M47 and M77
| would be easier to remember between.
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