<i> The </i> Big Question: Why Do Freeways Get Such Respect?

Dear Street Smart:

Three questions. First, is there any truth to the rumor that with the decline of orange groves, our county’s name will soon officially derive from the ubiquitous orange cones designating road construction?

Second, how is it that Southern Californians have developed the practice of referring to highways as the 5, the 405, etc., instead of simply 5, or I-5? The appropriately precedes a named road, like the San Diego Freeway, but why for numbers?

I’m not aware of anywhere else in the country that uses this peculiar construction. Given the frequent traffic updates on radio, a lot of time could be saved by eliminating this superfluity.

Finally, I am puzzled by the coming private toll roads. In particular, articles in The Times described one coming down the Santa Ana River to the San Diego Freeway and then heading east along 405 as far as 73. My question is, where on Earth are they going to put a toll road along 405? Is that route accurate?

John R.M. Wilson, Costa Mesa I’d like to tackle these in reverse order. You are right that there is no spot on Earth to put a toll road along the San Diego Freeway south of the Santa Ana River. But the promoters of the river tollway, the Dallas-based Perot Group, say it wouldn’t be on Earth. Instead, the road would be elevated on pilings along the northern edge of the existing freeway until it merged with the Corona del Mar Freeway.

As for the use of the when discussing freeways, you certainly are an astute fellow. We Southern Californians certainly do sprinkle the around a lot when describing our freeways, as if we’ve elevated them to some higher plane in the pecking order. My brother, a dyed-in-the-wool Northern Californian, paid a visit to me a month ago and had the same observation, suggesting that no one in the Bay Area would resort to such excesses.

I have a personal theory. Southern Californians take freeway names very seriously. Perhaps here more than anywhere else, we regularly emblazon the name of a highway--as in Santa Ana Freeway or Costa Mesa Freeway or Orange Freeway--on directional placards along the route. As a result, Southlanders often refer to freeways by name instead of numeral. And, as a result, we may carry the over like a beat-up but beloved suitcase when referring to freeways simply by number.

Of course I am no linguist, so I called UC Irvine and asked for help. Prof. Mary Ritchie Key of the university’s linguistics department said my theory might hold promise. But she has yet to see any studies determining the origin of the practice or anything validating whether Southern Californians actually do use the en masse when describing freeways by the numbers.

She said it was not unusual for such linguistic differences to crop up among various regions of the world sharing a common language, noting that we Americans use the in a lot of instances the British wouldn’t dream of. For example, while we here in the States “go to the hospital,” the British “go to hospital,” Key noted.

But she had no ready solution to the the puzzle, so readers--and other academicians--are invited to submit their own theories to Street Smart.

As for our disappearing orange groves and the orange traffic cones that have replaced them, isn’t it a sad truth. My worry is that we’ll soon have so many traffic cones along our roads and highways that someone will suggest we change the county’s name entirely.

Let’s just call it “Cone County.”

Dear Street Smart:

I was at Cal State Long Beach recently teaching a traffic violation course and received two interesting questions. I was not sure of the answers, so I’ll lay them on you.

First question from a lady: “My husband is a roofer. He and his crew spend all day spreading hot tar and hammering. At the end of the day, they are tired and hot, so they stop at a convenience store, sit in the shade and have a couple of beers. My husband wants to know if it is legal for him to transport his crew to their cars a few miles away in the bed (not the cab) of his pickup truck while they are still sipping on their unfinished beers.”

Second question from a lady: “I am a single mother and need to take my 9-month-old son to the baby-sitter, go to work and return at the end of the day. Do I qualify to use the diamond lane? Does my 9-month-old son qualify as the second passenger in terms of the two-or-more-passengers requirement in most diamond lanes?”

Bob Nichols, Lake Elsinore First the roofers’ beer bust: It is perfectly legal to have an open container of alcohol in the bed of a pickup truck, according to Steve Kohler, a California Highway Patrol spokesman in Sacramento.

Kohler noted, however, that it is illegal to have an open container inside a car or truck. He also stressed that the lady’s husband should be careful about loading his beer-guzzling work crew into their own cars for a wobbly drive home. It typically takes only three 12-ounce cans of beer over a two-hour period to send a 150-pound person’s blood-alcohol level over the .08% legal limit, Kohler said.

As for the woman with the 9-month-old infant, she’s in luck. In California, age is not a factor in qualifying as a passenger in a car pool. So everyone from newborns through seniors gets counted.