Exit sign omits city, but there’s a reason

The problem

Don Cleveland of Lee’s Summit knows his neighborhood well, but when a cousin visited from St. Joseph, Cleveland stumbled on a problem.

Cleveland told his cousin to take Interstate 470/Missouri 291 from Interstate 70 and then take the Lee’s Summit exit, but the cousin got lost when he didn’t see a sign for Lee’s Summit.

The exit he should have taken, where Missouri 291 splits from I-470, was labeled for Harrisonville. Cleveland wants to know why the exit on I-470 isn’t labeled for Lee’s Summit.

The answer

The short answer is that drivers already are in Lee’s Summit.

“With any of our signing, once you are inside the city limits of a community, we no longer place that city name on our green board signs. … We sign for the next city that you would come to along that route,” said Laurel McKean, district traffic engineer for the Missouri Department of Transportation.

The Watchdog is aware that Lee’s Summit has begun using its “Yours Truly” brand, and he has to say it beats “Lee’s Summit: Gateway to Harrisonville.”