Bad highway/road designs

[Mark Morrissey]

This drives me nuts. Maybe getting older has me annoyed by nearly everything I see but lately the worst is getting stuck in traffic on a daily basis -- that's my number one peeve.

You guys in Southern California can relate for sure.
For starters, a horrible design here in New Jersey would be the Garden State Parkway. So here you are -- you're traveling south to north, you go from the least populated areas where you have a nice 5 lanes... and those 5 lanes turn from 4 and then 3 lanes right as you get to the most populated area. Isn't that brilliant? That simple equation adds up to a traffic jam pretty much everyday of the year.

Ugh..It gives me a headache.

[Jim Garfield]

I had the misfortune to drive the length of the GSP back in October and know exactly what you mean. I had to drive home from north of Philly at 4pm, so you can imagine what traffic was like by the time I got to NJ. I don't know how you guys who live there can put up with that every day, it would push me over the edge I'm afraid. Too many people around NYC, that's why I live in the wide open spaces of RI. Big sky country.......

[trdking]

The good old 405 fwy here in LA CA Is claimed to be the worst road in the entire USA It is 5 and 6 lanes wide and it can easily take you 2 1/2 hours to go 40 miles. When bidding work in the area you have to factor in drive time as no-one will travel into the area with out getting paid to sit on it. I try to avoid it at all costs It is ridiculous

[will hung]

I think every road in the south western PA area is a poor design. Route 22 and 30 are basically a collection of red lights with some parking spaces between them. Route 70 is an interstate high way littered with speed bumps and pot holes with exits that are basically the length of a car, so cars pulling on or off are significantly slower than traffic, and it has many blind corners, as a result, everybody just drives in the passing lane. Then you get to Pittsburgh proper. Due to all the tunnels and bridges, all the major high ways cut down to 2 lanes, so you are hitting traffic no matter which direction you are taking into the city.

[blucille]

I've been crossing the country for work since 1991, literally all of the lower 48. These days I fly to a city and spend 1-5 days there. No US city is immune. No US city has prepared its infrastructure for the SUV's and their typically clueless drivers, nor the distracted drivers (how would you fix that anyway)....until the day of autonomous cars (soon), road travel is just lousy in any metropolitan area in the US...Seattle, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, LA, SF, DC....even Columbus, KC, SLC.

I blame a LOT of this on the cars themselves. How many cars can you change what you are listening to, or the temperature inside the cabin without looking away from the road for several seconds. It used to be that all adjustments were made by feel.....you want it hotter, slide the thing to the right, cooler, to the left.....you want a different radio station, you know where to find the button, two from the left, that you desire....now, you need to look at the giant screen in the middle of the dash.....anyway....

That being said, up here in far north eastern NJ, I don't feel it is so bad, most of the time. Plus, my commute time is however long it takes to get from upstairs to downstairs. Unless I'm headed to an airport (at 5am, typically)

[setho]

We've got too many competing goals. There's efficiency in moving people. But they don't want it too efficient, or public transportation suffers. They want gas tax revenue but higher fuel efficiency. They want tolls when they feel there's too much traffic, but no tolls when the economy suffers (eg - moving goods and services by roads is expensive not to mention moving shoppers around your state is expensive). We want bigger roads, but not at the expense of some field mouses habitat. We want more capacity, but not at the expense of property rights.

So, roads will continue to suck.

[62S-R-S]

I blame a LOT of this on the cars themselves. How many cars can you change what you are listening to, or the temperature inside the cabin without looking away from the road for several seconds. It used to be that all adjustments were made by feel.....you want it hotter, slide the thing to the right, cooler, to the left.....you want a different radio station, you know where to find the button, two from the left, that you desire....now, you need to look at the giant screen in the middle of the dash.....

For today's car buying public....I think this would outsell Ford Focus and Chevy Cruze combined, and reduce SUV's on roads.


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[62S-R-S]

I blame a LOT of this on the cars themselves. How many cars can you change what you are listening to, or the temperature inside the cabin without looking away from the road for several seconds...

Agree wholeheartedly...your post reminded me how painful some of the "loaded" (bird nest) features are to have at all. '01 Golf of mine has the ridiculous 'Fan control module', and 'Central Locking' module. The Locking allows 'small amounts' of current to flow while the car is parked, like it or not. If I unplugged the module, it affected part of the dash. Thus, a Dremel wheel is the only way into the module > revealing 5 relays encased in plastic, clicking away and often. To then have to painstaking dremel tops of the relays to insulate the contacts and car battery lasts a good long time now.

Anyway, back to Jersey roads.

[70tangerine]

I can go on about this for hours......

moving N from Bklyn to upper Westchester removed alot of my headaches.

But what still gets me nuts is poor placement of road signs/directions......meaning one often has to make a directional change in like .3 seconds or miss it totally.

[pu911rsr]

you know when I drive through Yellowstone having to wait for all those damn bison drives me crazy -
Phil