Rhode Island names and other odd naming conventions

[John Francini]

Not sure about whether smartphone live-traffic maps will render traffic reports obsolete. To use a smartphone map you have to take your eyes off the road to manipulate the map or just to read it.  If you use a GPS device it needs a paid subscription to get traffic info. The traffic report may be old fashioned, but it's free, allows you to keep your eyes on the road, and lets you plan alternates in your head.  

Having just driven through the NY-NJ area, I used WCBS' traffic reports to find the easiest way around it. 

John

On Apr 6, 2013, at 7:06, Ari Alpert <xradioguy@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Lived in Chicagoland for 3 years during the 90's and thought it was much easier to understand radio traffic as an outsider. The names "Edens", "Eisenhower" (aka the "Ike"), and "Kennedy" actually appear on maps. Not sure I recall ever seeing "gas tanks" or "jughandle" in the Boston area or "South County" or "Big Blue Bug" in RI on any maps. I think east coast cities are a bit more provincial than other areas of the country (we like our landmarks and old names for things). For people just travelling through, it would be impossible to understand traffic reports even given a map. Increasing use of smartphones with live-traffic maps may render radio traffic reports obsolete some day in the not-to-distant future much as school cancellations are obsolete now.
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Bob Nelson <raccoonradio@gmail.com>
> To: Paul Hopfgarten <pariho@mail.com> 
> Cc: Ari Alpert <ari@alpertfamily.net>; Boston Radio Group <boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>; Chris Hall <chris2526@comcast.net> 
> Sent: Friday, April 5, 2013 12:01 PM
> Subject: Re: Rhode Island names and other odd naming conventions
> 
> (Radio related): When visiting Chicago in the 90s I heard radio traffic
> reports for "the Edens", "the Eisenhower" and "the Kennedy". It would be
> helpful to know, for outsiders, which interstates, etc. they meant! And if
> you're not from Pittsburgh you have no idea what the Parkway East or
> Parkway West is, etc. In our area we know of "the gas tanks" (off Central
> Artery) and "the jughandle light" (Rt 1, Peabody).
> 
> There were plans to put I-95 right through what's called "the southwest
> corridor", connecting with the central artery, then going up through
> Revere/Saugus/Lynn
> (you can see the exit to nowhere on US 1 in Revere) as well as an I-695
> that would have been an inner loop (another exit to  nowhere off of I-93).
> It was pressure from NIMBYs and BANANAs (not in my backyard, build
> absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) that killed off these projects.
> My Dad would say Gov Sargent had something to do with it, "yeah, 'put Sarge
> in charge' was his slogan".
> 
> Route 128 pops up in Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner" and the Dave Dinger
> Ford ad jingles, etc. And while I-95 is supposed by unbroken I think it
> "disappears" in favor of the N.J. Turnpike