Los Angeles - Exit Numbers and TTS
Southern California, generally speaking, has been a latecomer to the practice of posting signage for freeway/highway exit numbers. Los Angeles, specifically, seems to have resisted the idea with dogged tenacity. In most cases, if there is an exit number posted on signage at all on an LA freeway, it is on its own small square sign, low to the ground, and so far down the offramp as to be all but invisible to the driver until it is far too late for it to be of any use. As such, I find it frustrating in the extreme that exit numbers are given top billing in both on screen navigation instructions (causing the more relevant information to be truncated and hidden from view) and in TTS (where by the time the client is done chatting about the exit number, it may be too late to hear what the actual name of the exit or next segment of transition is).
Someday, this will likely be rectified on our highways, but until that time comes, I would propose that at least in cases where exit/interchange ramps have long names, and where the exit numbers are not posted at all on the big green signs that precede the off ramps, that they be appended to the ends of ramp names, rather than stuck at the beginning. I realize that this runs contrary to the accepted practices in most of the US, and that it could be confusing for editors not familiar with the area, but as someone who drives around in Los Angeles and its neighboring counties, from Santa Barbara to San Diego, I find it a continuous annoyance to be told first about an exit number, and last about the thing that's written on the signs I can actually see as I'm driving. I've polled close to 50 people on this subject, and in MOST of the cases, people look at me and ask incredulously something like "What? There are exit numbers on the freeways?"
I've read some multi-page threads on ramp naming, and I know that some have touched on California's historical reluctance to numbering exits, but I've seen no one mention the possibility of making the exit number come after the relevant street/highway name, rather than before. Maybe it wouldn't work. Maybe it would break something in Waze's TTS engine that I don't know about. I don't know, but I'm hoping that someone else who is a veteran of the LA freeway system will chime in and either confirm my frustration or denounce me as a minority complainer, so I can cease ruminating about this and go on my way about fixing things that are more broken.
Someday, this will likely be rectified on our highways, but until that time comes, I would propose that at least in cases where exit/interchange ramps have long names, and where the exit numbers are not posted at all on the big green signs that precede the off ramps, that they be appended to the ends of ramp names, rather than stuck at the beginning. I realize that this runs contrary to the accepted practices in most of the US, and that it could be confusing for editors not familiar with the area, but as someone who drives around in Los Angeles and its neighboring counties, from Santa Barbara to San Diego, I find it a continuous annoyance to be told first about an exit number, and last about the thing that's written on the signs I can actually see as I'm driving. I've polled close to 50 people on this subject, and in MOST of the cases, people look at me and ask incredulously something like "What? There are exit numbers on the freeways?"
I've read some multi-page threads on ramp naming, and I know that some have touched on California's historical reluctance to numbering exits, but I've seen no one mention the possibility of making the exit number come after the relevant street/highway name, rather than before. Maybe it wouldn't work. Maybe it would break something in Waze's TTS engine that I don't know about. I don't know, but I'm hoping that someone else who is a veteran of the LA freeway system will chime in and either confirm my frustration or denounce me as a minority complainer, so I can cease ruminating about this and go on my way about fixing things that are more broken.
Re: Los Angeles - Exit Numbers and TTS