Jman, you threw me for a minute… till I noticed from your profile that you’re north of Albany, where the Thruway IS “90” rather than “87.” But I usually just call it “the Thruway” myself. 
Montfort, I don’t know why the plethora of Route 7s, but it seems to be a fairly common phenomenon. There’s also Route 17 (N&S), 17A, 17K, and 17M…
Actually, it may have been 17, not 7, that has the plethora (love that word) of roads.
I encountered it along the Thruway in Poughkeepsie/New Paltz, as well as up along the Northway in Saratoga.
As I mentioned in that other thread about the “the” in front of freeway numbers - I’m sorry, but “the” is here to stay with me. I grew up saying it, and I didn’t even notice or know that anyone said it any different until a relatively short time ago. I’ve recently moved out of state, and someone pointed it out to me. Until then, I didn’t even notice, or care. As long as I knew what freeway to go to…
I am a native Angeleno, and I guess I have the LA “accent” and use all the terminology, and I always will. That’s the way it is. If I were from England, or South Carolina, or Boston, and I moved somewhere else, would anyone expect me to obliterate my accent because I wasn’t in my hometown anymore? As long as you can still be understood…who fricking cares?
I know this is all tongue-in-cheek, of course. 
Oh, I asked this in the other thread, and I’ll ask it again here. Does anyone outside of S. Cal. say “surface streets” to describe residential, or non-freeway streets? It’s a common term in LA. As in, “I got off the 210 at Ocean View Blvd. and took surface streets the rest of the way home.”
In the Houston metropolitan area, we have the following:
Interstate Highway 10:
I-10 (never “the I-10” but sometimes “10”)
Katy Freeway (I-10 West) (sometimes “the Katy”)
Baytown East Freeway (I-10 East) (formerly East Freeway) (never “the Baytown East” or “the East”)
Interstate Highway 45:
I-45 (never “the I-45” but sometimes “45”)
North Freeway (I-45 North) (never “the North”)
Gulf Freeway (I-45 South) (never “the Gulf”)
U.S. Highway 59:
U.S. 59 (never “the U.S. 59” but sometimes “59”)
Eastex Freeway (U.S. 59 North) (sometimes “the Eastex”)
Southwest Freeway (U.S. 59 South) (never “the Southwest”)
We say “the 10”, but never “the I-10”.
Another native-born (Whittier) and user of surface streets. The only other person I’ve heard use the term here in NJ is a recently-moved Californian. I think this relates to having fewer freeways or perhaps a greater reliance on surface streets here. Many of these streets are numbered highways and are referred to by number.
I say “surface streets”, but I think I picked that up while I was living in LA. Then again, sometimes I say “local facilities”, but I work for the highway folks, so bureaucratese creeps into my vernacular pretty easily.
I sometimes call them that, but for the most part, I refer to them as “the streets” or “local”. As in, “I just got off the 101, and took local the rest of the way” or “the freeway is too backed up, I’ll the streets instead.”
I’d always assumed, for no good reason, that the Stevenson started at about Kingery Highway (Rt 83) and the southern section of it from there to St. Louis (or where ever it ends) was I-55. Of course, now it makes more sense to say the Stevenson starts at the I-355 junction given the amount of traffic, but I guess there’s no rules for this sort of thing.
You’re right about the traffic reports being useless though. Thank God I live and work in the suburbs and only have a five to seven minute “commute”.
Actually, the identifier “Interstate” really refers to how the route was funded and whether the Federal Highway Administration has included it in their system of interstate freeways. It has nothing to do with whether it actually crosses state lines. To wit, Hawaii has Interstate routes, which you might expect would call for a REALLY long bridge…
And of course Philly traffic reports are totally mixed with numbers and names. There’s:
“95”,
“295”,
“the Blue Route” (476),
“the Northeast Extension”,
“the Scuykill” or however you spell it (76),
“the Turnpike” (276),
“Route 1”,
“the Black Horse Pike” (some NJ road),
“the White Horse Pike” (some NJ road),
“the Main Line” (Rt. 30),
“the Vine Expressway” (676),
“611”,
“309”
[It’s really freaky that as I type these, my mind is reciting a whole litany of frequent traffic reports including “slow-going from gladwynn to the Conshohocken curve”, “95 is jammed from Academy to Girard”, etc. No… no… make it stop!! AAAAAAaaaggghhh…]
As a native, I understand the Chicago traffic reports quite easily, but I pity the out-of-towner trying to figure out what the heck the reporters are spewing over the airwaves.
As far as the 355 thing, if you listen to the AM stations (670, 780, 720), they often refer to it as “355” or even worse for those unfamiliar with the area, “The North-South.” A sample traffic report could be “It’s 55 minutes on the outbound Ike from the post office to the North-South”…yeah that makes sense. Or my favorite, the Kennedy: “30 minutes on the outbound Kennedy from the circle to the split, 55 to the airport, we’ve got a disabled car at Hubbard’s Cave blocking the left lane”…they should have a traffic report handbook available or something.
By the way does anyone else find it amusing that Lake Shore Drive gets shortened to LSD?
KFWB has posted a small glossary of So. Cal. freeway terms here: http://kfwb.com/trafques.html
Is “Sig Alert” used outside of So. Cal.?