Thoughts on the Highway

A thought I had somewhere in rural Minnesota was the way interstate highways are treated everywhere in the U.S., except the northeast.  At home, to get from Point A to Point B (no matter the distance between), we will usually jump on the highway to get there.  I often take the highway to get from one side of Warwick to the other.  The interstate highways are the way to get around.  Elsewhere in the United States—not so much.  The interstate highways are exactly that as you head west: a way to get from one state to another.  Sure, they will still get you from A to B, but you’d only take the interstate if A and B are several hundred miles apart.  If you wanted to go anywhere locally, it wouldn’t make sense to even think about an interstate, since the freeway might be 50 (or more) miles away.  Instead, state and county roads service the points between A and B.  It’s a very different idea than the way we travel at home.

Another difference on the interstates in the rest of the country is the way that exits are numbered.  In New England and the NY/NJ/PA tri-state area, exits are numbered sequentially.  The first exit you get to is Exit 1, the next one is Exit 2, and so on.  Everywhere else the exit number is based on mileage, so Exit 25 is in mile 25.  The next exit might be Exit 50, if it’s another 25 miles before the exit.  It makes so much more sense.  You know how far you are from the exit, rather than thinking, “OK, so we just passed Exit 5, and we need to take Exit 12.  Is that going to happen in 10 miles or 100?”  Perhaps someday “they” will decide that the rest of the country has it right and change things up at home.   Perhaps.  Someday.

--Karyn