Whatever happened to North and South?

[theoriginalblurker]

I've lived in Houston for 10 years now, and you would think that I would have learned the names and directions of all the main streets around here. 




For those of you not familiar with Houston, there are 3 concentric circles of highway around "downtown."  Working from the inside out, you have 610, Beltway 8, and Highway 6.  There are then several highways that cross through these circles at various points.  Interstate 10 cuts through horizontally, just north of the center, Interstate 45 runs through at a tilt from about 5 o'clock to 11 o'clock (well, 4:30 to 11:30, really), and 59 comes in from 7:30, takes a quick turn in the center, and continues north through about 1 o'clock.

Then there are a few major freeways that start/end at 610, such as 288, which goes straight down from the middle (through 6 o'clock) and 290, which runs NW out from 610 through about 10 o'clock.

Mapquest has a pretty good picture for those of you who are now totally confused. 

All this would be very simple to remember, if people used the same names for these streets wherever they were located.  Unfortunately, however, there is a north freeway, a southwest freeway, Katy Road, the beltway, the loop (containing a south loop, east loop, and west loop, but, mysteriously, no north loop), the gulf freeway, and the tollway, all of which were also listed in my original list of highway names.

The trick is where you are located.  For example on I-45, if you are north, it's the North freeway, and if you are south, it's the Gulf freeway.  However, I have no idea where the magic N/S dividing line happens to exist.  But even with this confusion I might be able to figure it all out if they only used a reasonable method of description when referring to a highway location.

I present, for your edification, the silliness of Inbound and Outbound.

When I'm tooling along southbound on I-45, listening to the radio for the traffic report, I often hear something like this: "There's an accident inbound on 45 just before [insert the name of a street which I have never heard] causing a backup all the way to [insert the name of another street unknown to me]."  WTF?  How does this help me?  These radio announcers constantly use inbound and outbound when referring to a direction.  Why not north or south?  Or even (dare I suggest?) southwest?  How do I know whether you are moving toward downtown or away from downtown when I don't know the names of every cross-street in existence?

This was not the case in S. Florida, where I grew up, nor was it the case in mid-Michigan, where I grew embittered.  Why is it like this in Houston?  Do these people not like the idea of compass directions?  Is it too clear??  Perhaps the first compass was engineered by a Yankee, and so is anathema to the great state of Tejas.



I will never learn to orient myself with respect to this enigmatic "downtown" of which they speak.  Never.

Comments

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

Houston's highways are constructed like a spiderweb. Inbound is meaningful, as long as the announcers are consistent. There's a wreck on the North Freeway Outbound at Kuykendahl that has traffic snarled all the way to the loop is a meaningful piece of info. If they sub in I-45 for North Freeway, it's a little less meaningful. What it means, btw, is "take the Hardy."

The EasTex goes to East Texas. The Gulf freeway goes to Galveston. The Baytown-East (aka the BEast) goes to Baytown and Pasadena, the Katy goes to Katy, the Southwest goes southwest to Victoria, the North Freeway goes to Dallas and Yankeeland. The Nolan Ryan Expressway goes to Clute and Lake Jackson. The Hardy goes to the Woodlands by way of the airport.

It's all so simple, really. And the Katy goes to Wisconsin.

[greeneyes-rpi.livejournal.com]

So what you're saying is, if I knew where the roads were called by different names, I would know whether I was going north or south when the radio folks say "inbound."

Damn. It always comes down to more work for me, doesn't it?

;)

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

The names are descriptive. "Hmm. I live between Houston and Katy, it's likely that a freeway Houstonians call the Katy Freeway is important to me. However, the Gulf freeway is only important to me if I want to go to the gulf of mexico, or perhaps to a Gulf station."

"I-10 is slow from Navigation to the loop" provides inadequate information.