When I was maybe 5 or 6, a teacher at school asked if anybody could name 3 roads. I proudly put my hand up and said "A1, M1 and A1(M)". The teacher said that no, they were all the same road. I felt so smug, and at such a young age, knowing that the teacher was clearly wrong and how stupid they must be if even I knew something like that and they didn't. And so began my first steps into nerdism...
Where I live now there are a few East-West roads and due to the topography, no North-South roads connecting them. All the side roads off these E-W roads were lettered. Problem is, there is an e.g. "I" road off of each E-W road which makes giving people directions or emergency response complicated. So, at some point, some of the side-roads were re-named to be numbers. So now one of the "I"s is 19, etc. Problem is, in AT&Ts system the mappings from landline number to address still uses the old lettering system and apparently cannot be changed - and this feeds into the emergency dispatch system. So, if you live on one of these roads and call 911 on your home phone, they'll have a difficult time finding you and there's a chance they'll go to the right address on the wrong road first... Ugh.
I grew up along US Highway 62 - which I found our recently is the "only east–west United States Numbered Highway that connects Mexico and Canada".[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_62" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_62</a>
To add to the pedantry -- the Scottish system re-uses the number with an "M" instead of an "A" when a new motorway replaces the old road on a new alignment, but if the existing alignment is upgraded then (as in the rest of Great Britain) the A road sometimes keeps its number with a "(M)" suffix. And it's not necessarily the case that the old road is renumbered, either.<p>So we have the M74 and A74(M) which are different pieces of the same road. There are bits of the A90 interspersed with bits of the M90, although the bulk of the A road is north of all the motorway and the motorway has in many places a different alignment to the original road. And the M8 is the main road connecting Glasgow and Edinburgh, replacing the A8, which is a different road with only segments remaining.
If the UK road system interests you at all in any way (if it doesn't, that's probably reasonable), I highly recommend Auto Shenanigans' 'Secrets of the Motorways' series on YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7f_jBGPY7FtXQuaroTz-bIsUbjFgqrfS" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7f_jBGPY7FtXQuaroTz-...</a><p>He visited and documented anything 'interesting' about (and sometimes just nearby) every motorway in the UK, in a pleasingly entertaining style. He's also got series about all the service stations, some abandoned roads, and is currently working on road journeys recommended in a 1920s Michelin guide.
Road numbering enthusiasts are not unique to the UK. But as with train spotters, UK road geeks are more enthusiastic than their US counterparts. And the hobby is very rare in Canada, that country only having the one big road.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Numbered_Highway_System" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Numbered_Highway...</a>
The UK’s road numbering system feels like it was designed for the convenience of the people in Whitehall filing their maps rather than those using the roads. Giving adjacent roads very similar numbers is the maximally confusing thing to do. For my brain at least - I have to choose between the M73, M74 or M77 and I often get it wrong. It would be easier if they’d reversed all the numbers to put the zone at the end - I feel M37, M47 and M77 would be easier to remember between.
Fans of UK road-numbering may enjoy Billy Bragg's A13 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McCHIK_yBJo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McCHIK_yBJo</a>