Here’s my column from the Sunday paper. If you’ve already read it elsewhere (like here), please skip on down to the comments below. Thanks.

SAY MY NAME

Alert reader Kim prefers to think of most roads by name, not by a number. For example, when she was looking for a park-and-ride lot last month:

The State Fair listed a parking garage at a county road. It took me some time to find it, but I finally did … If they’d said Hopkins Crossroad I’d have known where it was.

Officials need to stop using these county road designations unless they want to keep things cryptic! They aren’t listed on all the maps, but the names of the roads are.

The same goes for the Crosstown Freeway. It took me awhile before I found out it was 62. Not everyone living in this town was born here and knows every alternative name for every road.

The metro area has very mixed feelings about its county roads. Nobody would ever refer to Hennepin Avenue by its number, but everybody in Burnsville calls County Road 42 County Road 42.

Similarly, most non-engineers would never use “C.S.A.H.” to describe a road, but that doesn’t keep that unwieldy acronym from popping up on signs. (C.S.A.H., which officials pronounce “kuh-SAH,” stands for county state-aid highway — a fancy name for a county road that gets state money.)

Roadguy thinks it’s best to avoid alphabet soup, and when in doubt, go with both the road’s name and its number.

The Star Tribune’s style manual instructs reporters to refer to Kim’s favorite freeway as Crosstown Hwy. 62. It’s a bit wordy, but thoroughness is helpful when you’re trying to get to where you want to go.

TOO MANY COLORS?

Alert reader Paul thinks our three-light ramp meters might have too much going on:

My question is, why have the yellow after the green? I mean, it’s not like you need more than two colors. Are these recycled stoplights that we designed to go green-yellow-red like traffic lights tend to do? Or is it a more psychological reason for us drivers?

In some states, the signals on entrance ramps just have red and green lights, and they’re switched to green during non-metering hours.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation went with the three-light signals because they’re more familiar to drivers, said Todd Kramascz, an operations supervisor. MnDOT likes the “cautionary tone” that the yellow light conveys, he said, and the flashing yellow during off hours uses less electricity than a steady green would.

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