That's too bad AZ is changing I-19 back to FFU. I've never quite understood why Departments of Transportation want to revert back to FFU. Aren't they civil engineers? Aren't engineers supposed to be supportive of the metric system with all the mathematical calculations they do on a daily basis? At my job when we changed to the North American Datum (NAD) 83, we used feet instead of meters. Most of the reasoning was that the state DNR and DOT, and the counties use feet for their GIS data; it seems to me, engineers would want to use meters and hence metric system. Based on what I've heard on changing highway and road signs, my guess is that this is the area where we are going to hear the most howling from the anti-metric Americans. Of course, there wasn't a peep about signs when speed limits were raised from 55 mph. :-) . ______________ ____ | | RICH KIM, Spatial Database Administrator \ | | | Washington State Department of Ecology, GIS | // | P.O. Box 47600, Olympia, Washington USA 98504 | * Olympia | Phone: (360) 407-6121; Fax: (360) 407-6493 \ _____| E-Mail: [email protected] `---------' http://www.ecy.wa.gov/services/gis/index.html -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [USMA:43690] Re: Subject changed to speedometers and odometers From: "Norman & Nancy Werling" <[email protected]> Date: Wed, March 11, 2009 5:19 pm To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> John M. Steele Sat, 07 Mar 2009 06:48:49 -0800
This article http://www.gvnews.com/articles/2009/03/06/breaking_news/00mileposts0308. txt reports that Arizona Dept. of Transportation will spend $1.5 million of its Federal economic stimulus money to remove the metric distance signs along a 100 km stretch of I-19. This will include removal of the metric and rotation of already placed Customary signs to face traffic. Perhaps not quite the way we hoped stimulus money would aid metrication. (On the other hand, being a leader for 30 years, with no follower or plans for followers is proabaly silly too.)
