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Why Wisconsin's county highways are lettered, not numbered (2019)
- skywhopper 1y agoMissouri also does letters for county highways. But one thing unique to Wisconsin is that some highways aren’t just single or double letters, but an abbreviation of their destination, like the road to Whitefish Dunes state park in Door County is “WD”.
- sanex 1y agoBest lake Michigan beach in Wisconsin!
- bombcar 1y agoSiri calls them highways, they’re County Roads! And I’m still searching for County Road PP. once I find it I’ll drive to it and the kids will laugh at Siri.
- hed 1y agohttps://www.modot.org/projects/routepproute30 https://www.modot.org/projects/routepproute30
- jtbayly 1y agoCTH-PP Tomah, WI 54660 43.99805° N, 90.36020° W I believe that is what you’re looking for.
- sgwealti 1y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/wisconsin/comments/1md5gmp/this_place_is_ridiculous/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wisconsin/comments/1md5gmp/this_pla...
- epcoa 1y agoThey’re still county highways, at least according to the person interviewed in the article. It’s even called the Wisconsin County Highway Association.
- dpe82 1y agoI drove it 2 weeks ago: https://maps.app.goo.gl/tzDq1cP7WEngYCaH7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/tzDq1cP7WEngYCaH7
- hypercube33 1y agoI used to live near P and OO in Chippewa Falls
- bigtunacan 1y agoI live just off J in the Hatfield area. Been to Chippewa Falls countless times.
- czwief 1y agoI spent the first 18 years of my life in Chippewa Falls (near the intersection of J and X near Wissota), and TIL there’s a P/OO
- wormius 1y agoI always laughed when I passed that...
- bigstrat2003 1y agoThere's more than one, since the different counties can reuse codes. The one I know of goes from Brillion, WI out towards Chilton. I grew up in the area so I know that one quite well.
- jaredsohn 1y agoVisiting my parents in Wisconsin and I'm about a mile away from it right now. We also have PPP.
- wormius 1y agoGrowing up we never used "Road" we just said "County (letter)" Probably because the signs themselves never say Road or Highway (at least usually, back in the day, I haven't paid attention recently). I like the system. It helps reduce confusion in terms of what the "main" (state/interstate) vs the local.
- bombcar 1y agoI think part of it is that “the highway” now usually refers to a nice highway or freeway somewhere nearby, and if you say “the county X” without specifics which one, you’re likely to say “county road”.
- BooneJS 1y agoThey’re CTH : County Trunk Highway. Posting from CTH T between the intersections at TT and TTT.
- jethkl 1y agoThis is an instance where Conway's Law applies: state and county systems were kept separate so that maintenance and repairs crews wouldn’t accidentally duplicate work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
- jonstewart 1y agoI grew up in Iowa and Wisconsin. Iowa’s road system is beautiful—a road every mile, every few miles a paved road, all either east-west or north-south. If you know the general direction of where you’re going, you can bumble around with confidence. It’s Manhattan over an entire state. Wisconsin, nothing makes any sense. Sure, sure, Wisconsin is maybe a little hillier, but the roads curve and splice together in crazy ways in the flat valleys, too, and the roads adhere to no particular direction, and of course County B in one county bears no relation to County B in the adjacent county. And there are so many routes where I live in southwest Wisconsin where you might as well say, “you can’t get there from here,” given how indirect and circuitous the best route is in relation to how the crow flies. If you like driving for hours at 35mph while watching out for deer, Wisconsin’s county highway system is for you.
- analog31 1y agoI live in Wisconsin. I'm a cyclist, and I love the roads. The urban folklore was that the state maintained good paved roads in order for the milk trucks to reach the dairy farms during the winter, when everything would otherwise turn into a mud pit. I read about "mud season" in Ukraine, and it was instantly familiar. I hadn't thought much about the circuitous-ness, but it's true. My assumption all along has been that the roads have to work around the labyrinth of rivers and streams. In fact my biggest annoyance as a cyclist is finding routes where I don't reach a dead end and have to back-track. And now it's not just rivers but major highways. Still, it's easier for a cyclist because our hours don't cover as many miles.
- jonstewart 1y agoIt is great for cycling, for sure.
- zdragnar 1y agoThis is somewhat unique to Southwest Wisconsin due to all the bluffs. I've lived in Eastern Wisconsin and the Northwest, and while they aren't quite Iowa's grid, they're generally all east-west or north-south running.
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- ehaskins 1y agoSomeday Google Maps will learn not to pronounce County N as "County Road North"... That's not as hard as AGI right?
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y agoBecause no other state has a combination of state and county roads.
- piperswe 1y agoI know for a fact both Texas and California have numbered county roads. The Central Expressway in Silicon Valley is Santa Clara County Route G6.
- dragonwriter 1y agoCalifornia's has some similarity to Wisconsins: state routes are numbered (e.g., S.R. 99 through the Central Valley), while county routes, instead of just letters like in Wisconsin, generally have a single-letter prefix (the prefixes vary by regions within the state) followed by a number. (There are exceptions, though, as Lake and San Bernardino county routes are also just numbered, like state routes.)
- aarestad 1y agoAs a Sconnie native, the main thing that annoyed me about the letter system is that it's easy for the letters to rhyme; for example, near Verona (home of Epic!), there are (Dane) County roads PB and PD. Gotta enunciate carefully. :P This would qualify as a "usability issue" I would imagine. :)
- brettgriffin 1y ago> They needed to be able to keep them separate, and hence, they separated them by the numbers and letters That's the how and when, but that doesn't actually explain why they had to use letters, does it? Even before computers and internet it seems like it would have been possible to devise a system across 72 counties to assign county roads a number that doesn't conflict with roads under other systems' jurisdiction.
- abecode 1y agoone of my favorites is County Road AF, near Fall Creek and Augusta