I swear to God, every one of these fucking things is located in Longmont, Colorado. Either that or the bastards that drew the map I was using were high on crack. The map said that 3rd Street becomes Rt 119, but when you drive down 3rd street at 4:45 in the morning you discover that it pretty much dead ends at Rt 119, and then you have to guess, left or right to get to the airport? Bastards.
I haven’t thrown out the map yet — I’m planning to burn it.
It wasn’t until I moved down here that I learned that jug-handle turns are so unique to PA and NJ. Georgia doesn’t really seem to have a special road feature, but when we went to Florida, I noticed that they have a tendency to end lanes randomly. You can be doing 45 in the rightmost of 3 lanes on a busy road, and all of a sudden, there’s that big white text printed on the asphalt: LANE… ENDS… HERE. And then there’s a curb.
my favorite traffic pattern are the dreaded traffic circles. i thought they were limited to jersey, but maryland has a bunch of them too.
My personal favorite right now is the 76 to 1 to 76 merge in Philly, where when you’re taking the Schuylkill Expressway (76), and it starts to back up around City Line Avenue (1), you can merge on to 1, bypass most of the backup on 76, and then merge back onto 76 with no penalties.
Shhh, don’t be telling everyone your commute secrets on the intarweb! Soon they’ll all be doing it!
Re. jamie: Given that I know they’re called “roundabouts” in England (cf. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), I think they’re ubiquitous.
I can assure everyone that “roundabouts” are numerous in both England and Scotland, especially in rural areas. There is also one in the Colorado Rockies (don’t remember the town name, though… little help, bug?)
Was that at Nederland, or up in that village that started with an E?
Nederland sounds right.