Change one event in American road history. What impact does it have?

[formulanone]

But, as in the other what-if's in this thread, if Ford hadn't done it, someone else would have.

The automobile dated back to 1886 (Benz Patent-Motorwagen), and the first American-built self-propelled vehicles started out in the mid-1890s (the Duryea). Production numbers were low, and unaffordable to the masses. But eventually, someone brings a good product down to a reasonable cost.

Who designed red to be stop, green for go?

Not sure if it was known at the time, but red has the longest wavelength, so it's perceived first. But red has long been associated with blood, and thus signals fear in our little monkey brains.

Green was known as the complementary (opposite) to red on a color wheel, though the concept of complementary colors doesn't seem to go much further back than the mid-1800s.

But why not cyan, since it's the RGB-based opposite to red? Apparently, they'd used white light on some very early signals to mean "go". Maybe it was hard to tell the difference from a distance, because pure white light was hard to come by?

I think there hadn't been much testing into mixing light colors, as opposed to mixing color pigments. But ships had used a red on the left side and a green light on the right before traffic signals, and aircraft later carried that red/green standard.

[webny99]

I would expect services at the interchanges for non-ticket toll roads. The reason that there aren't typically any on ticketed toll roads is because it costs more to get off and back on again.

What ticketed toll roads you looking at?  There's a ton of services at most exits on toll roads with tolls at the ramps.

Uh, yeah, unless I'm missing something:
(A) It rarely costs more to get off, then back on.
(B) Almost all the Thruway's interchanges have tons of services.

[sprjus4]

(A) It rarely costs more to get off, then back on.

US-301 in Delaware has this flaw - if a traveler wishes to exit at one of the exits for services, which there's plenty of in Middletown, they incur a second fee.

The current setup is there's one mainline toll gantry at the state line for $4, then all northbound on / southbound off ramps have a $1 toll gantry for local / in state traffic.

But if you cross the state line paying $4, exit, then re-enter northbound, you get charged an extra $1. Same going southbound.

I actually got off at Exit 2 for services when traveling that way a few months back heading southbound, and I intentionally shunpiked the toll plaza to avoid the double charge. The toll-bypass route had a significant amount of traffic, along with trucks which are technically prohibited.

[vdeane]

The Maine Turnpike also operates that way for everyone who doesn't have a Maine E-ZPass.  If you do, it's a virtual ticket system.  If you're paying cash, or even if you have an E-ZPass from another state (IMO this reason alone is why Maine is the worst offender of transponder discrimination out there, though MA is a good runner-up for having three toll rates instead of the usual two), it's instead a barrier/ramp system, with three mainline barriers, barriers at every entrance, and exit barriers on the Falmouth Spur (I-495) and both I-295 interchanges (one of which is easily shunpiked - presumably allowed on the theory that Maine cash users are more likely to know this than people from out of state - and the other of which isn't actually unfair since you don't pass any other toll points before exiting there, being the first exit southbound with the mainline barrier just past it).

[Max Rockatansky]

California decided numbering duplication was okay in the 1964 State Highway Renumbering. There would likely be routes like US 99 still around and no weird oddities like I-238. 

[sparker]

California decided numbering duplication was okay in the 1964 State Highway Renumbering. There would likely be routes like US 99 still around and no weird oddities like I-238. 

That all depends upon what is considered "duplication".  Caltrans still forbids duplication of numbers in different locations, but does allow "continuation" numbers where Interstate designations are continued as state highways; they're considered one continuous route in the agency's lexicon.  110 in L.A. is among the more prominent of those, with the state designation on freeway portions that don't stand a chance of ever being Interstate standard (e.g. the Arroyo Seco Parkway); others (CA 15, CA 210, CA 905) are clearly "placeholders" for eventual Interstate designation.  Of course, 238 is the "odd duck"; the rationale for that has been chewed over exhaustively elsewhere, so reiteration isn't necessary.  But what the new rules that accompanied the '64 changeover did allow were multiple sections of signed routes; this was intended specifically for CA 1, which was to be a common designation for the state highway hugging the coast north of San Juan Capistrano regardless of how many segments were necessary to do just that -- of the 4 "gaps" where US 101 serves as the coastal server, two are clearly co-signed as CA 1 while one (Oxnard-North Ventura) has sporadic trailblazer signage and the remaining (Rincon-Gaviota) devoid of CA 1 signage.  Other state routes with separate sections have implied (and legally designated) unbuilt connectors (e.g. 65, 178), while others have gaps that are unlikely to ever be bridged (curiously, all in the 160's: 162, 168, and 169).  Some others (e.g. 160) have gaps due to relinquishment, mostly in urban areas. 

As to the US 99 deletion back in '64 (and fully realized in the field by 1973), the part of the route not coincident with I-5 -- if one considers the present CA 99 alignment as a template -- clearly exceeds the 300-mile minimum required for intrastate US highways (Wheeler Ridge-Red Bluff), so the choice to delete the US designation within CA can be laid at the feet of the Division of Highways alone.  I've inquired about this to my cousin-in-law who was working for the agency (D3, as a surveyor working out of their Marysville office); he says that the decision was made at the top levels of the Division -- but was done after consultation with their counterparts in Oregon and Washington, who wanted US 99 gone within their borders -- and AASHO (before the "T" was added) expressed a preference for deleting the designation completely rather than retaining a segment within any of the traversed states.   Not wishing to take a contrary position re its neighbors, the decision to delete US 99 in CA was made. 

[vdeane]

California decided numbering duplication was okay in the 1964 State Highway Renumbering. There would likely be routes like US 99 still around and no weird oddities like I-238. 

That all depends upon what is considered "duplication".  Caltrans still forbids duplication of numbers in different locations, but does allow "continuation" numbers where Interstate designations are continued as state highways; they're considered one continuous route in the agency's lexicon.

No, he's saying that's what he'd change.