All photos but one are NB, but not all of the NB ones are the same direction. I-495 is a beltway, and thus you really either go clockwise or counter-clockwise, not so much in a particular cardinal direction. I believe though that for the duration of the I-495/I-95 multiplex, 495 is kept as NB/SB. That multiplex would not exist, and the points where directionality changes would probably be altered somewhat, if I-395 into DC (originally signed as I-95 even) were completed through the city and out to the current independent stretch of I-95.


Getting the oddball out of the way, this is SB on the C-D road in the US 1/I-95/I-495 cloverleaf, courtesy Lou Corsaro.


Room for an I-595 shield that will never be put there because the route will never be signed, even though it's been there quite awhile. Counter-clockwise, courtesy Doug Kerr.


This is just temporary signage, but is the only CT-style sign I saw in the area. Would that it were button-copy. By the way, in the last 17 miles, what was NB for the first photo is now SB, so this NB is clockwise.


Moving southward, but was previously northward, we come to the 3-Y beginning of I-270, and three different ways of signing it. This is actually I-270 SPUR, though it's just signed as part of I-270. The real I-270 merges into I-495 after it turns EB-WB, which makes sense because 270 is an E-W road. Originally, I-270 was I-70S, and I-70 east of their split was I-70N. The purpose behind the split was to give Washington and Baltimore equal stature along a 2di, but the cities settled their differences and resolved the suffixes, unlike Dallas/Ft. Worth and Minneapolis/St. Paul along I-35E/W. With the change, Washington is now served by only one major 2di (ignoring I-66), and indeed only one family of 3di's (if you don't count I-270/I-370 on the northwestern fringe) - I-295, I-395, I-495, and secret I-595. I-195, I-695, I-795, and I-895 populate the Baltimore area, and if I-97 is properly called I-995, Maryland gets really full.


Barely across the Potomac River is the first sign in Maryland, and it's button-copy! These still live on I-95, but this is the only one I know of on the entire Beltway (which, incidentally, I just clinched in 2004 despite first having traveled part of it in the 1980's).

Onto I-495/95, still on the Beltway

Into Virginia on I-495
Onto I-95 alone
Exit 25 to US 1
Exit 19 to US 50
I-495 and 495/95 (Capital Beltway) on Steve Anderson's dcroads.net
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