How Far is it From Quincy to Springfield?

Factual Questions
1

According to the Springfield, Illinois State Journal-Register, it’s 108 miles. That’s all fine & dandy, but how do cartographers arrive at these conclusions?

IOW, does the statement “It’s 108 miles from Quincy to Springfield” mean:
[ul]
[li]It’s 108 miles from a certain landmark (say, the Capitol Rotunda) in Springfield to a certain landmark in Quincy (say, the dome on the main building at Quincy College).[/li][li]It’s 108 miles from the westernmost Springfield city limit to the easternmost Quincy city limit.[/li][li]It’s 108 miles from the westernmost Springfield exit to the easternmost Quincy exit.[/li][li]It’s 108 miles from some random point in Springfield to another random point in Quincy, chosen by the cartogrophers’ computers.[/li][li]Something else.[/li][/ul]
TIA

2

My WAG: Distance between main branch of post offices perhaps?

3

I always thought that “X miles to Y City” is measured by how far away City Hall was.

4

It has to be something like the City Hall. If you drive south on I5 toward Los Angeles you come to a place, IIRC, where you pass a sign that says “Los Angeles City Limits” and a little further on come to a sign that says “Los Angeles 40 miles.”

5

I know that, for New York City, distances are measured to Columbus Circle (in CPW) and for Washington DC distances are measured to the Ellipse (a park just south of the White House). So the official distance between the two would be from Columbus Circle to the Ellipse.

6

Well, just to spice things up a bit, I’ve got a 2001 Rand McNally Road Atlas here in my lap, and it says that it’s 110 miles from Quincy to Springfield. As indicated by the little red arrows, it looks like they’ve measured from the downtown Quincy intersection of Illinois Route 57 coming up from the south, and Illinois Route 104 coming in from the east, to the downtown Springfield intersection of Illinois Route 97 and Peoria Road, which is Business Loop 55.

I think Rand McNally tries to measure from the center of town, more or less. As to how they decided that Peoria Road and Jefferson was the “center of town”, I have no clue.

So now the question is, how did the SJR come up with 108 miles?

7

When you drive along a road, you may see a sign that says 100 miles to Springfield. You keep heading towards Springfield and you may see another sign that reads 102 miles to Springfield.

The problem is that there is no consistency as to how they measure those miles. The first sign may indicate that’s how far to the city limits, but the second sign may indicate that’s how far to the business district (city hall, etc.).

8

Um, that holds true for the popular ‘50 Mile Radius’ maps, in NYC, however, it would lead to a very lopsided situation, as Columbus Circle is approximately 1-1/2 to 2 miles from the western border of NYC (of New York State, in fact), and about 15 miles from its easternmost border.

I’m somewhat anal about milage, and the accuracy of signs that make note of them. If traffic is light, I’ll set my trip odometer to zero as I pass a ‘Next Exit XX Miles’ or ‘Gotham City 12 Miles’ sign, Usually the milage is about on the nose at the ‘Entering Gotham City’ sign.

I think the signs only measure distance between themselves.

For that matter, how accurate is your odometer?

9

Horace Mann rears its ugly head again.

It’s possible that they’re using the county seat-the county courthouse is a block down from that intersection as you travel south on 9th Street (Peoria Road), between Washington and Adams. And interestingly enough, the SJ-R is a block past that, between Adams and Monroe. Maybe they’re driving from their parking lot or something. It’s hard to figure, though, how one block could equal two miles (this is Springpatch, after all). Perhaps they’re using a different route to get to Illinois 4 and thence to I-55 or Illinois 104. I do know that Jefferson/Madison brings one pretty far north on Illinois 4 when they finally intersect, but I would think all the turns and jogs you’d have to make to get to Route 4 (Veteran’s Parkway) using the surface streets south of Monroe would equal the whole thing out.

10

Hey, I didn’t say it was correct. It’s probably fairly accurate for Manhattan, where most of the touristy sites are in NYC (I don’t go there often, so correct me if I’m wrong). But I know for a fact that AAA and any other road map measures it to Columbus Circle.