I was born and raised in San Jose, been driving around here since about 1973. I’ve never heard anyone (up here, I mean) use “the” the way you do. If I was giving directions it would be something like, “Take 101 south to 280, don’t get off on 85 or 87 but go all the way to 17, then exit on Lark [Ave.], go right to Winchester to San Tomas . . .” Nothing ever gets a “the”.
You know, everyone up here says that they never put a “the”, but they do. It’s much softer and less stressed, but I hear it a lot, even among dudes born here.
Quebec anglos also do so: the 20, the 15, the 440, etc. (In our case it may be reinforced by French.)
That junction was largely (totally?) rebuilt sometime in recent living memory (mid-1990’s or so?). So we don’t know how big of a mess you are talking about – the big mess it used to be, or the even bigger mess it is now?
I remember when Emeryville was just one big auto junkyard that stretched from horizon to horizon. And on the shore-side of the freeway, there was that big mud-flat area where people used to sneak out and built those marvelous sculptures out of sticks and twigs they found laying around there. I haven’t seen that done for years and years. Must have something to so with this new high-security age we live in or something.
Yes, Illinois law defines freeway similarly, so that abutting property owners have no right of access to it. However, the Bishop Louis Henry Ford Freeway is a 1996 renaming of the Calumet Expressway, sponsored by folks who may not have made the most careful study of regional toponyms.
Not at Mowry. We’re no hillbillies. 
The only time I hear anyone call it the Nimitz is when traffic reporters want to put some variety into their reports. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a civilian call it that.
BTW someone who wrote into Mr. Roadshow this morning mentioned “the 101” and was told that any time that usage slips in he gets nasty mail.
Yep, by elitist assholes, who likely actually do say “the 101” but are in denial. :rolleyes:
But you are right in that no one calls it “the Nimitz”.
About ten miles of interstate highway in the Great Valley of Virginia, from Grahams Forge to Wytheville, geographically almost exactly east-west, is simultaneously Interstate 81 south and Interstate 77 north (westbound), or of course the reverse if eastbound.
81 and 77 are unusual numbers for Interstates. Is there a story behind that? Nearly all Interstates (with a few exceptions) have numbers ending in 0 or 5. And the three-digit ones are not unique – the same three-digit numbers may be re-used in different areas of the country.
Very clever! I wonder if he was ever in L.A. and told to do so.
I have lived in southern California and now reside in the midwest. My friends tease me mercilously for using the definate article.
Here’s a list of all the 2-digit interstates. Interstates with 2-digit numbers that don’t end in 0 or 5 outnumber the 0s and 5s by a 3-to-1 margin. (Could I have squeezed any more numbers into that sentence?).
It’s clear that more of the non-0, non-5 interstates are in the east, but that’s because there are more small interstates east of the Mississippi in general. 0 and 5 interstates, nominally, go from coast to coast, or northern border to southern border, respectively.* As such, they tend to be longer, higher-volume, more important roads. And in the less population-dense western part of the country, they tend to be the only ones needed. If you live in certain places out west, Interstates like 5, 15, and 10 may be the only 2-digit ones you encounter. And because of the way 3-digit routs are numbered, they will also end in 0 or 5 in those areas. (I’m looking at you, LA!)
But around this part of the US, the spaces between the “big” roads like 75, 95, 80, 40, etc are filled with lots of shorter routes like 26, 79, 68, 71, and even 69. There is no shortage of non-0, non-5 roads.
*Most of them don’t actually, either because parts of them have been transformed into another road, or because they never did in the first place. But that was the nominal goal when the Interstate Highway numbering system was devised.
North-South freeways have odd numbers that increase from West to East. East-West freeways have even numbers. A freeway whose number is divisible by five is a major route. Three-digit numbers indicate a ‘loop’ or an ‘offshoot’ from the main freeway. The number of the freeway it deviates from is indicated by the last two digits. If it is a ‘loop’, the first digit is even, and if it is an ‘offshoot’ (i.e., it does not rejoin the main freeway), the first digit is even.
The 5 runs North and South. The 405 is a ‘loop’ of the 5 that runs North and South with ends at the 5 in the San Fernando Valley and Irvine (the El Toro Y), so it has an even first digit and ‘05’ indicates it is a ‘loop’ of the 5.
It’s name is so generic that it drove me (sorry) crazy trying to remember it, but I finally tracked it down.
It covers the creation of highways - roads that attempted to link major cities - which were first done by private interests. Almost all of these had names rather than numbers, the Lincoln Highway probably most famous. After a while the lack of standards and lack of money defeated them. (They marked the roads by nailing small signs onto telephone poles. Some poles had more than a dozen signs as roads overlapped. But they didn’t mark where to turn off to continue that road[!].) The the government took them over and there was a numbered system of highways decades before the Interstate. The numbers went the other way. Low east-west routes were in the north rather than the south. He also talks about the creation of freeways inside cities and the minimal access to turnoffs they were designed to force.
If you want to know more about this process before the Interstates, this is a good place to start.
Here’s a fun fact that almost nobody knows. An Interstate has to start and end at another Interstate. Up in Rochester, NY, I-590 is an Interstate only to the point it intersects I-490. North of that it’s New York State Route 590 (which goes past New York State Route 104 until Titus Ave. even though the freeway continues on: only the mostly nerdly cartographers can appreciate this) until it ends at Lake Ontario. Similarly, I-390 on the west side is an Interstate only up to I-490 and north of that it is New York State Route 390 until it hits the Lake Ontario State Parkway. Most out-of-towners are thrown by crossing I-490 since it looks like the expressway is going to end before they get where they want to go.
Hawaii’s H-number Interstates are a Special Case.
You can say that all you want, but I’ve never heard it, except from people who’ve spent time in Southern California, and I know for a fact that I never say it, not even a bit, not even to the inaudible level of Neil Armstrong’s supposed “a” before “man”.
“You take 280 to 101”, that last runs together as “tuwonohwon”, there just isn’t any room or time for a softer “the” to be anywhere in there.
I have heard exactly that. I say = “You know, this radio dude sez it”-= “well, he worked in SoCal”. “OK, Bob sez it, and he’s lived up here for 20 years”= “Yeah but he was born in SoCal”. “Then how about Sally. she was born here?” “Sure but her husband lived in LA for a long time”.
You know what we call this- “The No True Scotsman Fallacy”.
Having to drive on 880 twice a day, I am a devotee of KCBS traffic - and I have never heard them say the 101 or the 880 or the 80 or the 280. The Nimitz, yes - usually the Nasty Nimitz. And I don’t think I’ve heard anyone living up in Northern California using the.
We have friends who live not far from 101 in LA, and they say “the” all the time. But I don’t mind, since you have to pity them living in a hellhole. They sent their kids up here for college at least.
I have no doubt that was the intent of the system as designed, but in practice that’s not the case. The Atlantic coast is full of examples where interstates just terminate into other highways and even unnumbered surface streets. I-40 in Wilmington , I-26 in Charleston, and I-16 In Savannah all terminate in some sort of weird interaction with US 17. In Interstates 73 and 74 are ever finished, they’ll do the same thing with US 17 around Myrtle Beach. I-95 in Miami turns into US 1. It happens in other parts of the country, too. I-39 in Wisconsin just sort of gives up and fades into US 51. That one, though, could easily be a difference between the “as planned” route and the currently built route.
And that’s just the two-digit highways. Three-digit Interstates routinely terminate at one end on a lesser grade road, but I imagine that’s not what you meant.
thanks, I was starting to think that I had been doing it all wrong, but apparently I’ve been following common Montrealer usage here 
FWIW, when I was in NYC a few days ago, I swear the hotel man asked us if we were taking “the 87” back up.
Yes, because naming the newbies were starting to catch on to the fact that every street in Atlanta is “Peachtree” something or other.
If you define Scotsman to be someone who moved there from France, than French is indeed the national language of Scotland.
Regardless of that, we have actual examples right here in this thread of natives who say it and hear others say it. But they are outnumbered by people who not only don’t say it, but have never heard any other native say it; some have never heard anyone use it. You seem to be implying that most of them are somehow self-deluded into thinking otherwise.