A Indiana police officer pulls over a pickup truck on I-65. The driver rolls down the window with a sheepish grin.
"Officer, I saw a sign for I-65 and by mistake thought that was the speed limit!"
"Actually, sir, that is the speed limit on this route."
"Whew! It's a good thing I wasn't driving on... I-70!"
"That is also the speed limit on that route. Listen, sir, you have a busted tail light."
Theme Naming: Subverted. Houston's entire freeway system is built on a hub and spoke design, and is probably one of the most perfect examples of this in the world. But their naming system is... off.
For the Hubs:
There's the central hub, which is just four different freeways put together and has no official name. This is probably because nobody but a road geek thinks of it as a hub, rather than just an artifact of how the freeways bypass downtown instead of meeting in the center of it. It's not useful for much of anything on its own.
Interstate 610 Loop aka "Six-Ten", the "Inner Loop" or simply "The Loop", the only interstate loop.
Beltway 8, which is both the Sam Houston Parkway (frontage roads) and Sam Houston Tollway (tolled expressway).
And then there is...Grand Parkway. Another example of non-indicative names as it is neither Grand, nor a Parkway, and while still incomplete, is planned to be a loop.
For the Spokes:
Most of the Freeways emanating from Houston are named after directions: North Freeway (I-45 north of downtown), Northwest Freeway (US 290), Southwest Freeway (US 59 south of downtown), South Freeway (TX 288), and East Freeway (now Baytown East Freeway, I-10 east of downtown).
However, there is no West Freeway, Northeast Freeway, or Southeast Freeway. Instead we have the Katy Freeway (I-10 west of downtown), Eastex Freeway (59 north of downtown), and Gulf Freeway (I-45 south of downtown), respectively. The reason for the Eastex and Gulf having their names is that they were the first to be built, and were both named via contest. Katy was originally the West Freeway but now it is simply named after Katy, Texas.
And there are the plenty of other Freeways in Houston that include: the ones named after cities they pass through (Crosby Freeway, La Porte Expressway, Tomball Parkway), the Toll Roads (Hardy Tollroad, Westpark Tollway, Fort Bend Parkway), and the Spurs (Spur 527, Spur 5, and Spur 330)
Played Straight (originally averted), with the Memorial Villages. Originally, all but one had village in the name, but the last holdout, Spring Valley Village, added village to its name in 2007
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/Houston?from=Main.GreaterHouston