In article ,
David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 1/21/2011 5:43 PM Arfa Daily spake thus:

He was in sunny Caffy-lornia ... Costa Mesa in Orange County, a few miles
down the Interstate from LA

OK, Arf, a small lesson in regional US dialects, free of charge:

Nobody here in "Cal-ee-fonia", as our recently departed
Governator/Gropenator called it, calls them "interstates", even though
they are, in fact, interstate highways. Some folks back east may call
them that, though I'm not sure (I've heard them referred to as
"turnpikes" in some places). One wonders whether some LA residents even
know what an "interstate" is ...

In any case, just in case you actually visit Caleefonia sometime in the
near future, you should also be aware of an important difference in
usage between SoCal (basically El-Lay and environs) and NoCal (San
Francisco and thereabouts). Down there, they don't use *any* noun for a
road (highway, interstate, etc.), but they do use articles with the road
number, as in "the 405", "the 101", etc.

But bewa up here in the Beige Area, where we like to think we're so
much superior to our SoCal cousins, we never use the article, saying
instead "take 80 to get to Berkeley" or "take 101 to 280 to 17 to get
down to Santa Cruz". (One can easily spot newcomers to San Francisco who
refer to "the 80" or "the 101". That's just SO wrong!)

I don't think Arfa is going to "blend" whether he uses your terminology
or not, and I doubt that's his objective. But you wrote an awful lot of
words without using "freeway," which is what we call the 101 here, and
is the most common word for "interstate highway" throughout the midwest,
as well. I'm not going to say unequivocally that it's widely used all
over the U.S., because I don't know for sure, but I'd bet money on it.

In cities with many freeways, they have to use more specific terms, but
when there's only one, who needs a number?

BTW, everyone I know in LA doesn't use numbers at all, but names that
are meaningless to outsiders even if they have a map: "Ventura freeway,"
"Hollywood freeway," "Pasadena freeway," etc.