Comment on It hurts.
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Boston looks much easier to navigate though. Much clearer road hierarchy, meaning better flowing traffic, and less traffic near houses and shops.
Disclaimer: above statement is based on the image posted here, not on knowledge on the actual situation.
Where I’m from cities like Boston are the norm. When I was in a grid city for the first time, I immediately got lost on the roads because everything just looks the same.
On the other hand, Americans seem to have a more intuitive sense of the cardinal directions than Europeans do from my experience. Which makes sense if you’re used to roads aligned with them.
As someone who drives through Boston often: it’s the worst-planned city I’ve ever seen. I am fairly convinced that the underground tunnel system is actually creating an eldritch sigil of chaos (a last Good Omens), and it is not uncommon to encounter a seven-way intersection, where two of those ways are train lines, but aren’t marked, so at night, you can accidentally find yourself on train tracks. It’s like if someone bargained with the Fey to make a city.
I am familiar with Boston, and the 2 times I have driven in nyc it was SIGNIFICANTLY easier to navigate than Boston lol. NYC was at least partially thought out, Boston is what you get when your road planner is a 3 year old toddler who threw a hand full of spaghetti on a map and said theres your streets LOL. Possibly the most annoying city I have had the misfortune of navigating lol.
Yeah, Boston is chaos and it is super easy to get lost. And you’ll have two roads converging and splitting and you gotta just hope you’re in the right place!
Welcome to everywhere else in the world that’s not a fucking grid lol.
This isnt a computer where traces are made in 90 and 45° angles.
There weren’t computers when NYC’s grid was laid out either.
And the ancient Romans, and Indus valley people another couple millennia earlier were both fond of grid plans.
They’re considered passe, but there’s real advantage in terms of easy scalability and adaptability to changing land uses.
Well, there were. But back then computers had hair and nails.
Mmm, hot computers. Giggity.
Then there’s Pittsburgh. It’s like Boston but when you take a wrong turn you end up on the wrong side of a mighty river or two.
This guy yinzez
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
actually tho, flowing windy streets and roads are so much better.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Less intersections where cars can crash into pedestrians or other vehicles
lps2@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
I wish, just check Atlanta - winding stroads as far as the eye can see
Zink@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
Yes to all, especially the driver attention one.
I have two options when driving to work. One is shorter and takes straight level roads through the newest part of town.
The other way is slightly longer but it’s a twisty hilly road through the countryside.
I take the longer route every single day unless it is actively snowing or something. And now that hybrid WFH is a common thing, I don’t often drive in the snow.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 weeks ago
I mean, you can organise grids to be more or less stroady, and if you have too much of this going - like you have a medieval street plan - you can get the opposite thing where cars are forced through areas only suited to pedestrians, and everyone has to flatten themselves against building walls to make room.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
but the point is that by not organizing it into a grid, drivers aren’t going to cut through a low speed local street, keeping those streets less polluted and safer.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 weeks ago
That’s true of a tree style layout, but only that, and those have problems of their own. The example about moving aside for a car going through a narrow European street was something I’ve actually experienced.