Here is the image I spoke about earlier... what exits are these? (I'm almost thinking that image isn't even of the Merritt)

https://img.skitch.com/20120924-gyq4xd3 ... gnik7a.png



p.s. have any of you ever been to Boothe Park to see the old Toll Booths? I think there is also a parkway museum in Stratford?

WeeeZer14 wrote:Very cool info. And I just noticed that if you look at Google Maps (non-aerial) you can see the property lines showing the larger ROW.

That's a cool find!


The Merritt was built to alleviate congestion on US-1 and the planners had the foresight to plan a phase 2 when the Merritt became too crowded. I guess none of every thought something like I-95 would exist, although there are times when having an expanded Merritt would greatly help things, but I guess with it being a historic landmark that phase 2 will never come to fruition.

Here are a couple of the photos in the book I mentioned before.

First the completed slipperly/singing/upside down steel deck bridge in 1940 and you will noticed no Sikorsy in the background as it had yet to be built at that location. I believe their original location was at the airport.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8176/8025 ... 8681ed.jpg


On this one we are looking west underneath the railroad bridge at Talmadge Hill in New Canaan. Notice the entrance and exit ramps in the northbound lanes (the lane the photo was taken in) are on the east side of the overpass. At some point they were moved to the west side to mirror the southbound ramps.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8309/8025 ... ec9876.jpg

I took a good look driving by that area today and you can clearly see the cut though the hill where the ramps used to be. There is another photo in the book when that section was under construction and it looks like the lanes either went all the way over to Talmadge Hill Rd or it turned down to CT-106. If you look at the Gmaps view you can see the ROW went all the way to Talmadge Hill Rd. The station parking lot doesn't seem to interfere with where the on ramps used to be and I think thats the original lot anyway so I'm not sure the reason for the move, because it seems like a better ramp system then the current one that does a horseshoe to get onto the parkway. The arial view shows some interesting things, so one of these days I'm going to stop and investigate myself to see if there are any remaining traces.

Check out this old press photo I found on eBay. It shows the old Exit 36 NB exit/entrance ramps after the overpass. I still haven't found out when they were moved (or why) to mirror the SB side.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/1955-Bumper-to- ... 2c648cf44f

re the singing bridge -- which could be pretty slippery -- I used to tell the kids we were going to take off like an airplane, you could hear the engines kick in.

WeeeZer14 wrote:The biggest issue I had was unclear freeway splits. I-81/I-380/I-84 outside of Scranton PA was especially confusing because it lacked some prompts that are really needed due to non-intuitive continuations and lane drops. I've already edited that while I was on the road that night.

That area is complex. I don't send uncertain drivers through there without clear instructions. I don't know what you fixed up but I would recommend a bunch of ramp renaming in addition. For example I would make these two http://tinyurl.com/ce3yauf blank, and rename http://tinyurl.com/cs4zwk3 to include I-380.

WeeeZer14 wrote:I see you made changes to at least that one ramp. But you didn't put spaces around the slash character. Without the spaces, TTS will give strange results. I also added the control cities. So "to I-84 E/I-380 S" became "to I-84 E / I-380 S / Mt. Pocono / Milford".

I'm giving the rest of the interchange a look now.

Great. Regarding /, I found others with no spaces - I was puzzled and figured I was remembering the rule wrong. Regarding the control cities, I thought I detected a trend in the forum recently toward not giving TTS fewer words to say, and this seemed long. Thanks for the level set.

WeeeZer14 wrote:I've also noticed that Route 6 is called both US-6 and SR-6 in different places but as far as I remember it is indeed a US route here. Do you know anything I don't?

It's US-6.

WeeeZer14 wrote:Oh, and I thought the PA standard for state route/highways was to use PA-xxx but I see some SR-xxx here. Could just be the older edits I guess. We can split this off to a different forum since we aren't talking about the Merritt or Wilbur anymore

-> http://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=215&t=29533

Very cool info. And I just noticed that if you look at Google Maps (non-aerial) you can see the property lines showing the larger ROW.

So this past weekend on my way home from Boston I took I-91 from Hartford to the Wilbur then onto the Merritt to 287 and the Tapan Zee (with a stop in Bridgeport at the Beardsley Zoo). Most of the time I was looking to the left admiring the unused RoW It is a nice drive, especially the newly resurfaced sections in CT.