Inche-pounde revival

We like metric measurements and have been trying to use them. They’re easier to work with and briefer. And they ARE the international standard. About 75% of our readership is here in the US of A but there’s a lot of olde American inche-pounde (IP) stuffe still around (The English have been metric for some years so these are not ‘English’ measures as some describe them.) Seems a whole bunch of states, freed of federal requirements to go metric in the NHS act of 95 and TEA21 last year are discovering in the old IP measures a symbol of American patriotism, resistance to UN New World Orders etc.. Or they are being lobbied by small contractors and suppliers to go back to IP measures. So, sometimes at considerable expense some state DOTs are actually throwing out metrics that they have already adopted and are going back to IP measurements. Or else they are halting conversions altready in train. The ‘reverters’ are states like AL, GA, IL, KY, LA, MN, NC, NE, OH, SC, TN, TX, VA, WI, WV, WY. A few states never did much about metric conversion anyway, the do-nothings being MD, DC, RI, But other state DOTs are sticking with metrics, so by an FHWA count the metric states will be CA, CT, DE, IN, MA, ME, MI, MT, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OR, PA, UT, VT, WA.

In short it looks as though state DOTs will be split rather evenly, New England and the northeast and the west coast being metric, but much of the rest of the country going back to IP.

AASHTO had determined to go fully metric with all its manuals but will now follow FHWA and will cumbrously quote both metric units and IP equivalents. (As for us we’ll just dither around, confused and inconsistent too - like most of the US.)

Sen Tom Daschle (Dem SD) minority leader of the Senate has been the chief inche-pounde revivalist, it seems.