Ok, take a look at the road marking sign on the traffic light post to the left (feel free to click it to enlarge to try to read the words). First, note that while it does look funny, it's actually a real sign. I edited it slightly in GIMP to emphasize the words, which you might or might not (probably won't) be able to read. I messed around with the color levels, etc., but didn't retouch the lettering. That sign says, "Cecil Ashburn Dr/Four Mile Post Rd" (with little arrows pointing the directions). If you look carefully, you'll see the sign is about the width of a traffic lane (maybe more). If you're in the area, you can find the sign at this intersection:
View Larger Map
This is one of those, "this road is renamed at this intersection - it's one road to the right, one to the left." We have a lot of those in Huntsville and Madison. This one just happens to have a lot of words in each name, and it's printed back-to-back on a single sign. I found it interesting. (Sorry for the lousy picture quality, but I was driving at the time, in an area where I don't normally travel, and had to snap the picture quickly; my son and I were on the way to watch "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" - which we both enjoyed - for his birthday trip today when I spotted the sign.)
Anyway, I just thought I'd share.
View Larger Map
This is one of those, "this road is renamed at this intersection - it's one road to the right, one to the left." We have a lot of those in Huntsville and Madison. This one just happens to have a lot of words in each name, and it's printed back-to-back on a single sign. I found it interesting. (Sorry for the lousy picture quality, but I was driving at the time, in an area where I don't normally travel, and had to snap the picture quickly; my son and I were on the way to watch "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" - which we both enjoyed - for his birthday trip today when I spotted the sign.)
Anyway, I just thought I'd share.
I was going to edit the post to add, "Do you get confused when driving on these kind of roads, where the road you're on changes to a different road?"
ReplyDeleteBut I can't seem to edit this post - it disappears from the Blogger "compose" frame when I go to edit it, and I can't switch to edit HTML to add it, and I've noticed the text of the final paragraph picked up the attributes of the end of the previous paragraph, but I can't fix that since I can't edit the post.
Anyway, what about this "intersection" : note that Old Monrovia Rd makes a 90-degree turn; if you continue going straight north, you're no longer on Old Monrovia - you have to actually turn to remain on Old Monrovia (which later turns into Capshaw Rd when it crosses Jeff Rd).
Or how about I-285 that encircles Atlanta? If you get on that road, and continue to go all the way around Atlanta, you'll be driving on I-285E for a while, then on I-285W for a while (and in between on I-285N or I-285S). All without exiting and re-entering the interstate.
Roads are weird. I guess that's all there is to it.
Let's see...
ReplyDeleteHow about:
Old RR Bed / County Line Road?
Mount Zion / Blake Bottom?
Jeff Road / Slaughter Road?
Mill Road / Portal Lane?
Brown's Ferry / Old Madison Pike?
Wall Triana Hwy / Sullivan Street?
Plummer Rd / Mastin Lake Rd?
Or one of my favorties:
Johnson Rd / Airport Rd / Carl T Jones Dr / Bailey Cove RD
And what about:
Hwy 72 / University Drive? (Which, technically, is still Hwy 72 -- but when do you stop calling it Hwy 72 and start calling it University Drive?)
Like the above:
Hwy 53 / Jordan Lane / Patton Rd.
Research Park / Rideout Rd / 255.
I could go on and on.
Or how about Pine Grove, which, when you are driving west on it, "appears" to dead-end, but actually if you make a 90-degree right-hand turn, it continues?
Or Nance, which, when you follow the 90-degree curve to the left, becomes Pettus. But to stay on Pettus, you have to make another 90-degree turn to the right?
Or Sparkman Dr., which runs both north/south AND east/west, depending on where you are?
I think the Huntsville area is one of the worst I've ever seen for all these senseless street name changes. Makes a newcomer CRAZY.
Yep, I agree - one of the worst. Old Monrovia/Johns/Old Monrovia (the one I linked to in my first comment) is similar to the Pine Grove one, I think. And there are more.
ReplyDeleteAnother street annoyance, when done poorly, are service roads. The ones off 231/431 aren't that bad; if you lived in Newport News back in the 90s, you'd have seen some really poorly done service roads. (I think there's a poorly implemented one in Decatur, but I don't recall the road - don't travel much in Decatur.)
What I hate the most, I think, is the sheer volume of Madison into/out of Huntsville traffic (i.e., rush-hour stuff) - it takes me sometimes 30 minutes (or more) for my 9-mile commute, and that's without accidents. That makes, what, a 4.5 mph average speed on the way to work? 1/10th the primary speed limit? (For those reading this in metric nations, that's rougly 14.5 kilometers of commute, still 30 minutes, and a 7.25 kph average velocity; thanks to Online Conversions for the info.)
But I don't really have any suggestions for it; Madison's road structure wasn't set up to accommodate the amount of traffic it's currently having to support, and it shows. And there's not a lot of room for expansion (of the road system).
Oh well, guess I'll just have to keep it up until I can work from home full-time... or not work at all! (Feel free to send your donations for this last; make checks payable to... :)
Christy said... We live in East Limestone on a 'circle' that has two entries on the left side of East Limestone Road and two entries on the right side of East Limestone Road. So when we give directions to people we have to be certain to tell them 'the first McLemore Circle on your left' or 'the second McLemore Circle on the right' depending on which direction the people are driving down East Limestone Road. This has become tiresome over the years. Oh well, I suppose there are worse things we can complain about, eh?
ReplyDeleteI just looked at McLemore Circle in Google Maps, and, wow... that is horribly done!
ReplyDeleteOf course, I assume that all four entrances (and perhaps that "tag" off McLemore Circle to the east) were all there when you moved in... that is, you chose your own fate when it comes to direction giving for visitors... :)
We live on a street that has no signpost at all. Fortunately, we're in a very small town so everyone knows where it is anyway (or at least know the nearby landmarks-of-sorts). (Fed-Ex can never find us.) If you search for us on...let's see, is it mapquest or google maps? ... it can't find our street, either.
ReplyDeleteYeah, despite the fact that the neighborhood in which I live was developed back in the late 80s, our streets only recently (within the last year) showed up in google maps (and by "streets" I mean about 5 interconnecting roads). They're still not present in several various online maps, nor in my or my dad's GPS receivers (his is a Garmin Nuvi auto-routing one; mine is an eXplorist 500 LE by Magellan).
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, "Dunn Rd." - which is really a private driveway off Highway 79 in Pinson, AL, with two (maybe three) houses located on the property to which it leads, has been on Google Maps longer than my neighborhood. The roadsign which exists there was, if I recall correctly, put up by the residents (relatives of mine) at some point in the last 10 years or so. And it made it onto Google Maps before my neighborhood's county-maintained roads.