Where and why are there metric road signs in Arizona?
A road sign from Arizona:
Came across this from the web, found it curious. Traditionally the US, Burma and Liberia, I believe, don't use metric. But there are metric road signs in Arizona?
Best Answer
Appears as though it was a timing situation when it was built, during a brief law change.
That made sense in 1980, when I-19's signs first went up and when US was near the peak of its flirtation with the metric system. Five years earlier, President Ford had signed the Metric Conversion Act, declaring the metric system "the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce" and establishing United States Metric Board to guide the conversion. Schoolchildren dutifully learned their kilograms and centimetres.
But the Metric Conversion Act was only voluntary, and there was far too much inertia to change every single label in the country voluntarily. Reagan disbanded the Metric Board in 1982. Instead of leading the charge into brave new metric system, Arizona's highway is a reminder of a failed experiment.
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Does Arizona use metric system?
While most Americans are more or less foreign to the metric system, one stretch of road in southern Arizona uses metric units. I had to find out why. In 1975, the U.S. decided to align with the vast majority of other countries throughout the world and adopt the metric system.Why does Southern Arizona use kilometers?
The idea was to make the interstate more accessible to tourists coming from Mexico, where kilometers are the standard unit of measuring distances. Our bosses at the Arizona Department of Transportation have tried to change I-19's signs back to miles before. The signs have to be replaced periodically anyway.What US road has metric signs?
A 102 kilometer (63-mile) stretch of highway in from Tucson, Arizona to Nogales near the Mexican border is the only metric highway in the United States. Known as Interstate 19, sign distances are provided in meters and kilometers instead of in miles.Does Arizona use kilometers?
If you don't travel that important trade corridor often, you may not know about its unique place in Arizona's, nay America's, pantheon of interesting roadways. First opened for travel in 1962 (and fully completed in 1978), Interstate 19 is the only highway in the United States to be fully marked by kilometers.Why we must change the road signs to metric
More answers regarding where and why are there metric road signs in Arizona?
Answer 2
I'm willing to bet that this sign is from a place close to the Mexican border. I live in San Diego, CA, a city close to the Mexican border, and I've seen a few road signs in my area with metric units (actually, both metric and Customary units).
The reason why those metric signs exist is because frequently, people driving on those roads are often tourists from Mexico, driving cars that were built for the metric system (speedometer and odometer measure in metric units). This sign was put up for the benefit of people who are driving such cars, especially older cars that lack alternate scales for the Customary system.
You might even see similar signs in places close to the Canadian border, especially in areas frequented by Canadian tourists.
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Images: Mike van Schoonderwalt, Markus Spiske, N Jilderda, Jimmy Chan