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Re: Capital Beltway Semantics



gkailad@telogy.com (Gopal S Kailad) writes:
> Wouldnt it be better, if in addition to (or instead of) signs to I-495 
> E/W/N/S, there are signs to Inner Loop and Outer Loop,
> at least where I-95 joins the beltway ? Opinions ?


It's been tried--and found wanting, in the worst way.  

The Beltway is almost unique among North American highways, so it taxes
the regular kinds of terms used for direction.  Out-of-towners can easily
follow E/W/N/S directions on a highway, so that's how they should be
guided.  And (we) locals know enough to give directions like, "Follow I-95
North, then take I-495 West", say, to get to Bethesda from Richmond.  The
poor visitors shouldn't be confused by unusual terms such as "inner" and
"outer". 

In fact, those words were actually arrived at by Washington's
long-suffering traffic reporters about ten years ago, after struggling for
many more years with "clockwise," etc.  Then, some bureaucrat tried to get
them (the words, not the reporters) legalized, and those unreadable
"inner/outer loop" signs went up on all the Beltway approaches, so that
I-95 could be officially "completed" from Springfield to College Park
(hence, Maine to the Keys).  But "I-495"  was abolished in that same
stretch!  ("Harummph.  Can't have two Interstate numbers on the same
road.  The very idea....")  It was a miserable failure--lasted about six 
months. 

Finally, sanity broke out and we arrived at the workable method you now
see on Beltway signs.  Except for the vestigial, irrelevant, and still
unreadable "loop"  signs left here and there along the Beltway, "inner" and
"outer" are used only in traffic reports and newspaper articles.  It works
fine. 

-- 


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