Any other state does anything like this?

[Vikas]

I have been in Mass for now close to thirty years. I still can not get over how some of the things are done here! I just came back from making airport trip.

- Just few years ago, billions and billions of dollars were spent on revamping the Boston airport but it is still complete and utter chaos. I challenge you to find a single straight road in this airport. Mind you, they had gutted the whole thing and restarted but still made it worse.

- It is a coin toss as to which lane will have the electronic toll. It is completely maddening how one would never know if the FastLane/EZPass will be on the left side or right side until you come to the toll booth. Oh, and the toll booth will always be built on a curved road.

- Most freeway interchanges is built to maximize the cross over traffic leading to massive traffic jams during the commuting hours. Ramps are built so that Entering traffic and Exiting traffic will have to fight for the same space.

- Even if there is absolutely nothing around, the interchange will be built to make it as thrilling as possible. Example:- I-290 to I-495, what a roller-coaster that one is! Every month, there is a overturned vehicle on that decreasing radius turn.

- Do not even get me started on the rotaries. The one in Concord on Rt 2 is the prime example. Rotaries do not work when one road has lot more traffic than the other roads. On this rotary, the RT 2 traffic keeps on barreling down. If you want to get it in coming from 2A, best of luck!

- All of the expensive towns in this state are homes to prison inmates There is brand new prison built on the Charles River with the water view!

- If I can line up all the traffic engineers in one line, it will be lot more easier to shoot them.

- Vikas

 

[CivicFan]

I live in Indiana. We are a sparsely populated and underdeveloped state so we don't have such problems.

 

[Sayjac]

Quote:
Do not even get me started on the rotaries.
Aww come on, you gotta love the quaint New England rotaries. And such a great traffic management design for interchanges,too.

 

[RF Overlord]

The latest trend in MA, one that really gets my goat, is when they re-engineer an intersection and put two lanes in the same direction at the entrance, but only one lane on the other side. Since they don't make the right lane a "right-turn-only" or make the left one a "left-turn-only" people going straight line up in both lanes then have a drag race to see who can get the jump on the other lane. Massive FAIL. Traffic engineers in MA are absolutely NOT smarter than a fifth-grader.

 

[Spazdog]

Originally Posted By: Vikas
I have been in Mass for now close to thirty years. I still can not get over how some of the things are done here! I just came back from making airport trip.

- Just few years ago, billions and billions of dollars were spent on revamping the Boston airport but it is still complete and utter chaos. I challenge you to find a single straight road in this airport. Mind you, they had gutted the whole thing and restarted but still made it worse.



DFW is pretty messed up in terms of driving in or out of the place. The main thoroughfare is board straight but then to get off, you circle around for what feels like 720° then at the last second you have to decide Arriving or Departing. I mean the sign appears RIGHT NOW! DECIDE!!ARRIVING OR DEPARTING?!!!!
But once you are inside the terminal, it makes a little more sense. Way better than O'Hare, Dayton, or St Louis. Still, it's a '70s design that cost billions in '70s dollars for these crazy corkscrew access ramps

But as far as the toll booths? There's always the flying Impala express exit:

 

[Touring5]

Originally Posted By: Vikas

...

- Most freeway interchanges is built to maximize the cross over traffic leading to massive traffic jams during the commuting hours. Ramps are built so that Entering traffic and Exiting traffic will have to fight for the same space.

...

- Vikas


Well, I live in Indy and this item is seen frequently.

Much of the rush hour congestion and subsequent crashes result from cases where merging traffic requires multiple lane changes within a short distance. In these cases, if the merge lanes had been located on the other side of the road most of the conflict would be eliminated. Sometimes I think civil engineers are taught to find the most difficult solution available.

 

[The_Jeff]

You visited in the summer!!!

Last winter I took the kids to the Museum of Science on the Boston/Cambridge border. This was a couple days after the cluster-F snowstorms. Snowbanks were higher than cars and blocking all visibility between onramps and highways. Merging was a 50/50 mix of hail-mary and stop-dead. So you have to watch the guy in front of you as well as guess what's coming over your shoulder. There were also a nice bunch of oddities like class B box trucks stuck in the snowbanks because their tires caught and dragged them in.... with PO'd state troopers on scene hoping their cars weren't going to get whacked. There were also poor schmucks in bobcat skidsteers in the half-wide breakdown lanes trying to do something to push the snow back. If I were governor I'd have gotten some prisoners out at 14 cents an hour with some shovels!!!

Thought we'd take the T in, the lot was full, so we let the GPS lead us through the "salad district" which was full of warehouses and stuck/stranded/abandoned/regularly parked 18 wheelers on mega-potholed streets.

My wife lived in Worcester for a year and did the route 2 rotaries. We think they took some out since then!!! She rubbed her bumper on the corner, if she had something heavier than a corsica she'd have done a PIT maneuver accidentally... or on purpose!

The "Big Dig" was a success in that someone from away can fly through/ over/ under Boston so quickly they'll miss their exit.

290/495 is not such a big challenge if one obeys the speed limits. 290 is a circus with everyone going 80-85. I cool it down by "solomon pond (mall?) road" and haven't flipped anything yet. The glittery jersey barriers look sweet in the headlights.

I had to do the airport some time back and they had these temporary (permanent?) buses go around in circles three or four times in decreasing radiusses to skip the construction. I think they also treated other motorists to the joy of a left lane entrance/ right lane exit 50 yards ahead doing 20 mph the whole time. Read someone saying if they got off a bus at the top of a parking lot, and took the elevator down, they'd catch the bus ahead of the one they were on, but IDK if that applies to Logan or the Silver Line or some other dreadful piece of Bay State infrastructure.

Oh, I did a Logan run back in the early 2000s when the Big Dig was still rocking and they closed one of the Callahan/Sumner tunnels and had these spring loaded reflective yellow vertical sticks directing traffic through surface streets to make sure they made it through the toll booth. Cabbies were mowing these spring loaded things down left and right.

I could not imagine subjecting a new car to that state. My nine year old V6 Cutlass ciera with steel wheels was the perfect bomber to get around!

 

[hattaresguy]

Problem is its MA, my least favorite state.


Every time I drive in that state its a nightmare.


If I remember correctly MA is also the state you don't want to get caught with a gun in, since they don't recognize CC permits?

 

[river_rat]

Originally Posted By: Vikas
Ramps are built so that Entering traffic and Exiting traffic will have to fight for the same space.

Iowa does this in the Des Moines metro area. In fact, they redesigned/rebuilt the I80/35 interchanges some years ago to make them as dangerous as they possibly could.
I think the people designed them should be held criminally responsible for each collision that has occured since.

 

[chubbs1]

I am afraid of those roads, I think Florida is bad enough, especially in south florida with all of the people and from so many countries where stop signs don't even mean slow down.

One question is MA worse than DC? DC was the most nightmarish place I have driven, compounded by the fact I had no idea how to get anywhere.

 

[PandaBear]

I guess there seems to be one thing that the San Francisco area does ok. The traffic is bad in commute but at least you can tell they really design things to be "safe" and make sense when you get in and out of freeways. They tore down a lot of interconnect that doesn't make sense and build those who does, but to be fair, when they build the big and wasteful freeway and reserve 6 lanes worth of empty space, California was only a farmland unlike the original 13 states like Boston that's already full of people and buildings.

The SFO airport seems to make sense (although it was relatively new). Houston airport on the other hand, was a nightmare in terms of getting connection flight and finding out how fast and far you have to run (no belt or tram between terminals) in 5 minutes after crossing the custom (taking 15 minutes), Continental airline seems to be adding an additional 30 minutes cushion so the 20 minutes between flights on boarding pass is really a 50 minutes.

 

[beanoil]

Originally Posted By: chubbs1
I am afraid of those roads, I think Florida is bad enough, especially in south florida with all of the people and from so many countries where stop signs don't even mean slow down.

One question is MA worse than DC? DC was the most nightmarish place I have driven, compounded by the fact I had no idea how to get anywhere.

Having driven in both MA (Boston and New Bedford) and DC (Washington area) in the last year, the winner for worst roads, layout and drivers is Mass, no doubt.

 

[Nick R]

I'd say that Massachussetts has the worst road layout, but, and sorry to anyone from there, New Jersey takes the cake for the worst drivers. Massachussetts drivers just seem to ignore you- alot of NJ drivers just don't seem to know how to drive.

 

[The_Jeff]

MA drivers know how to drive. When you're in tune with them, driving daily, they're predictable. (Or predictably unpredictable.) When you return from away, it's a culture shock.

Driving in DC is not too terrible, but parking is berzerkers. The nice grid layout of Pierre L'Enfant has been horribly molested with "no left/right turn" signs keeping you from pointing the car where you want to go. This keeps traffic moving, granted, but at a price. Confusing for tourists. Right lanes of two-lane roads suddenly turn into parking spaces with no warning. Diplomats park wherever they feel like it.

 

[Spazdog]

Originally Posted By: river_rat

Iowa does this in the Des Moines metro area. In fact, they redesigned/rebuilt the I80/35 interchanges some years ago to make them as dangerous as they possibly could.


I-35 is all messed up anyway.

It splits into I-35W and I-35E in Minneapolis/St Paul rejoins, then becomes a hideously expensive turnpike in Kansas, has weird speed limits in Oklahoma City, (I swear I saw a 46mph Speed Limit sign...like OK DOT ran out of 5's) then splits into I-35E and I-35W again in Dallas/Ft Worth, then joins again and is a hideous mess in Austin all the way to San Antonio.

 

[Surestick]

Quebec, while not a state, is good at bad road design too.

- No merge lanes, especially fun when the merge is a blind one. You better hope you are going the speed of traffic when you merge or it gets exciting!

- Bad signage they put signs telling you where to exit at the exit. Better hope you aren't in the right-hand lane in heavy traffic when you need to exit.

 

[Vikas]

We took the original Duck Boat Tour over the weekend with our guests. Whoever owns that outfit must be a Billionaire today.

About forty "Ducks", running constantly, for almost 11 hours a day, 80 (or 50) min each tour, 40 people on a "Duck" and they are booked solid every single day. While we were there, they turned down so many people who were told that all their tours were sold out for the day. It costs $32 per ticket. Anybody wants to do the math for me?

8 tours/Duck/Day * 40 Ducks * 40 people * $32/ticket = $400K/day

They run 8 months of the year.
Annual Gross = $ 200 days * 400K/day

It is only $800 Million per year, not quite the Billion I was guessing

I still can not get over it. Is there a mistake in my calculations?

- Vikas

 

[rjundi]

While I do not find it fun to drive around Boston but if you going during off hours and not peak it improves fine. My only frustration is very slow traffic.

 

[river_rat]

Originally Posted By: Spazdog
I-35 is all messed up anyway.

Ya. Last time I took divided state highways all the way to Denton, then got on 35 to Austin. Saved hours and was much more scenic. I love eastern OK.

 

[andyd]

I'm not even gonna try do defend MA highways. But I was in fear for my life driving through Hartford on I 84 You're putting along in the right lane and this bozo will merge at 75 mph , drift diagonally across the 4 lanes and disappear down a LH off ramp . All in a 10th mile.