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We have two major highways that touch this town. One is numberless so I'll call it NH. The other is an even numbered highway so I'll call it EW (for east/west).
Originally NH ended in town. If you wanted to get to EW you had to get off of NH, get on a local route and drive a good 5 miles or so to the end of the city limits to get to closest onramp to EW. There was talk about extending NH out for over a decade, but it was slow going.
They finally finished adding the 5-6 miles on to NH maybe last year March, or April at the latest. It's so young that even now Google Maps doesn't really have it right.
There's a couple of benefits to this.
1) Although this route is longer for me (3 miles more) it's faster. My drive to work is about 30-40 minutes, even when I'm only doing about 5 mph over limit. When I take the shorter way (get off at the old EW exit and take the back roads home) it's at least 45 minutes.
2) Not a lot of people know about it. So even during rush hour... it's pretty uncrowded. Traffic's picked up a bit in the past 6 months but, it's still not bad.
But because of #2 you also get people who like to speed. I mean I normally do around 75 now (it's a 70 zone). I use to do 80 but I've found that I go through less gas and still get to work on time at 75. PLUS, at the junction between NH and EW it drops down to 50... and NO ONE drives that slow.
But I've noticed something this past week.
Cables across the road. I think it's to mark how much traffic the road is getting - perhaps to test things out - but I never trust that those cables aren't also connected to cameras for a speed trap.
And on the last day of the month I saw a cop parked right at the top of the hill - where the road turns into a "merge onto EW" area and right past where the speed limit drops to 50.
So yeah... I guess the cops have figured out where to lay some good traps. Especially at the end of the month.
Originally NH ended in town. If you wanted to get to EW you had to get off of NH, get on a local route and drive a good 5 miles or so to the end of the city limits to get to closest onramp to EW. There was talk about extending NH out for over a decade, but it was slow going.
They finally finished adding the 5-6 miles on to NH maybe last year March, or April at the latest. It's so young that even now Google Maps doesn't really have it right.
There's a couple of benefits to this.
1) Although this route is longer for me (3 miles more) it's faster. My drive to work is about 30-40 minutes, even when I'm only doing about 5 mph over limit. When I take the shorter way (get off at the old EW exit and take the back roads home) it's at least 45 minutes.
2) Not a lot of people know about it. So even during rush hour... it's pretty uncrowded. Traffic's picked up a bit in the past 6 months but, it's still not bad.
But because of #2 you also get people who like to speed. I mean I normally do around 75 now (it's a 70 zone). I use to do 80 but I've found that I go through less gas and still get to work on time at 75. PLUS, at the junction between NH and EW it drops down to 50... and NO ONE drives that slow.
But I've noticed something this past week.
Cables across the road. I think it's to mark how much traffic the road is getting - perhaps to test things out - but I never trust that those cables aren't also connected to cameras for a speed trap.
And on the last day of the month I saw a cop parked right at the top of the hill - where the road turns into a "merge onto EW" area and right past where the speed limit drops to 50.
So yeah... I guess the cops have figured out where to lay some good traps. Especially at the end of the month.