By Susanna Ray
Herald Writer
Dennis Larson was born and raised in Everett and has lived in Snohomish County his whole life, but don’t ask him to point out Highway 527.
“I wouldn’t know where it was. It’s the Bothell-Everett Highway, that’s how I know it,” said Larson, who gets frustrated whenever he reads or hears about a road using the highway’s number instead of its nickname.
“Those numbers don’t mean anything to me,” he said. “I don’t relate to them.”
Most people can relate to Larson’s frustration, however. Almost every state highway in Snohomish County has a nickname that’s better known among locals than its numerical designation, like the Boeing Freeway. But it’s Highway 526 for officials describing road projects or accidents.
Multiple names can lead to missed turns and lost drivers, but transportation officials say there’s good reason for them.
Some of the more common local road names were in use well before the state Department of Transportation came along and started putting numbers on them, said Charlie Howard, the planning director for the agency’s Northwest region.
Some highways have nicknames that locals use but that don’t appear on road signs, such as calling Highway 526 the “Boeing Freeway.” But others are actual designations put in place by local city or county governments, said Mark Bozanich, a cartographer for the Department of Transportation. Road signs at some intersections on Highway 527, for example, also call it the Bothell-Everett Highway.
The state used a haphazard method of numbering highways until 1963, when the Legislature approved a plan for a new, more logical system, Bozanich said.
It was partly a reaction to the federal government’s numbering system.
The U.S. highway network numbering system originated in 1926 to create some consistency in roads when they crossed state lines. U.S. 2 got its name in that era. It’s the northernmost of the U.S. highways, which were given even numbers when they ran east to west and odd numbers when they ran north to south (Highway 99, formerly U.S. 99 in the days before I-5).
Then the interstate system was developed in 1957. Federal officials turned the road numbering system on its end to avoid confusion, starting at the high end in the north this time with I-90 and low numbers in the west (I-5). They kept the same even east/west, odd north/south method.
But that left the potential that a U.S. highway or interstate would have the same number as a state route, causing mass confusion, Bozanich said, so state transportation officials came up with a new plan.
For the most part, they designated the more minor highways with three digits, whereas major freeways have one or two digits, he said.
They tried to keep the same directional method for even and odd numbers used in the federal system, but added a twist. When a state highway is an offshoot of a freeway, its numerical designation often starts with that larger road’s number.
For example, there’s a “500” series of roads that all connect with I-5, starting down south with Highway 501 in Vancouver all the way up to Highway 548 in Blaine. Highway 204 is a branch off of U.S. 2, and Highway 92 shoots off Highway 9.
But go ahead and keep calling Highway 525 the Mukilteo Speedway if you want to.
State transportation officials are aware of all the different names, said spokeswoman Victoria Tobin, and they try to use both the official state route number as well as whatever nickname a constituent uses for it in any contact or correspondence with the public.
You can call Herald Writer Susanna Ray at 425-339-3439 or send e-mail to ray@heraldnet.com.
Locals often have different ideas for road names
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