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Share Your Local Traffic Nightmares
There is a certain kind of traffic intersection in which the design transcends mere incompetence and inattention and enters the realm of genuine malice. These atrocities don’t just inconvenience or endanger commuters and pedestrians, but embody active hatred and threat against them. For example, our own Fred Cole recently brought to my attention this horror show, which is — blessedly — being renovated but, in the interests of gaining a certain kind of dark knowledge, I propose the following contest: Let’s see who among us has the worst traffic intersection in their area.
For my own local example, I refer you to Neponset Circle. Located at the extreme southern edge of Boston, this spiteful, vindictive geometric sprawl links no fewer than five different roads, three of which are center-divided, and one of which is a half-mile-long bridge. Add to this two — two! — 180-degree turnarounds that are not part of the circle itself, multiple shortcuts between some of the roads, and a northbound-only freeway entrance (sorry, southbound drivers!), and you’ve got a sense of it. Oh, did I mention that it’s also crawling with traffic signals? Because it’s totally crawling with traffic signals.
One of the 180-degree turnarounds that is not part of the main circle (which was behind me when I took this photograph).
I-93 above. And yes, this is part of a “circle.”
I count eight traffic signals in this picture. Gallivan Boulevard is to the left, Neponset Avenue to the right, and the northbound exit to William T Morrissey Boulevard is straight ahead, in the distance. So, yes, this is basically a third of the whole mess.
So Ricochet, hit me with your best shot.
Published in General
In Minneapolis, Mayor Bike Lane Becky and the Met Council actively schedule road work and designs to make traffic so lousy, they hope you will give up and take the bus.
Consider the possibility that what Tom describes is that way on purpose.
When the Interstate blasted through Minneapolis, they had a problem: 94, being even-numbered, went east to west; 35 north to south. They had to meet. They had to commingle their streams. Solution: If you’re heading north on 35, simply go east on 94 for a while, then continue on as 35 parts from the common and heads on its own way. Or you can take 94 all the way to St. Paul. The world, she is your oyster.
Reality: not only is traffic merging and jostling, it’s doing so in a very short space, with no room for error. Northbound traffic has already slowed to handle the 90 degree turn; merging backs it up even more, and around 4 PM the molasses becomes cold concrete.
It might have been inevitable, given the physical environment and presence of complicating factors like “The Mississippi River.” Moses would have just leveled 20 blocks of downtown and gone straight through, so it could be worse.
Not particularly nightmares because for all the apparent foolishness to the things, there were underlying logics.
One isn’t even an intersection. Per se. I grew up on the streets of Kankakee, and that involved opportunities to drive to, and in, Chicago. There was a certain quality to driving on the Dan Ryan freeway: bumper to bumper at 70mph. Well, not quite bumper to bumper–the length of a Ford Customline was 16′, other cars typical of that. Thus, a 12-15 foot gap from the car in front gave braking reaction time without leaving so much room that a lane-dancer would slide into it. Unless he needed to get from my left to that exit ramp on the right that’s right there, right now.
For true intersections, there were none like those in Riyadh or Manila. There was nothing fancy about them; the crossing streets were roughly orthogonal to each other. What made them…interesting…were the driving cultures involved.
In Riyadh, traffic lights aren’t even suggestions; they’re just decorations for the intersections or cute markers for a starting line. Drivers would stop at a red, but that just began the game: a driver in one lane would edge forward in anticipation of the light change. A driver in an adjacent lane would edge a bit farther forward. A driver in a third lane (the King built a lot of six lane streets in Riyadh) would edge yet farther. In short order we’d have egged each other on across the intersection, followed closely by everyone behind us, honking enthusiastically to encourage us to quit dawdling, whether or not the light had actually changed.
In Manila, nose position is everything, just like in flying. Also, drivers intending to turn left acted on the presumption of getting committed to the intersection before the light changed, so that he could make his turn on the light’s change while oncoming traffic was stopping and before crossing traffic could get going (from acceleration, not from any delayed crossing traffic light changes). So, too, did the driver immediately behind that lead driver in the left turn lane (whether or not there was an actual left turn lane). So, too, did the driver immediately him. And the next driver. And the next….
In Plano, rush hours last around 20 minutes. In Manila, due to the nose position theory, rush hours blend into each other.
Eric Hines
Sounds like it was worse: Moses didn’t level those 20 blocks.
Eric Hines
This was to be my candidate too. I have never gone through there trying to get on I-20 East that there hasn’t been at least one wreck. Adding to the mayhem, I have seen no fewer that two or three motorists realize at the last minute they were about to miss the ramp to I-20 and shoot across two lanes of traffic and a gore to get on the nearly 360 degree on ramp.
As I read the comments about roundabouts, I thought, “I think Tom Scott did a video on a crazy roundabout.” Then, I get to your comment, see the map, and think “That might be the one.” I keep scrolling and find you’ve linked to Tom’s video. His channel is one of my YouTube subscriptions as I enjoy his work.
I have a traffic story from the early 1990s in Florence, Italy, where I was visiting.
I was driving on a one-way street. I came to a T intersection in which the road I was on was the top line of the T. In other words, there was an intersecting road to my left, which ended at the road that I was on.
Evidently I was required to make that left. Because when I passed through the intersection, I was on the same one-way street — but now it was one way in the opposite direction.
I stopped, backed up, and made that left.
I did appreciate the friendly Italian cop who saw my distress, and just laughed.
Lower Wacker can never entirely be yuppified.
Same problem here in Columbus, where I-71 and I-70 run together for a very short space, also comingling with SR315. To stay south on 71, you have to whip across 4 lanes of very busy traffic, but going north you have to merge into people trying to exit at High St, then cut left across 5 lanes, all in under a mile.
Still not the worst in the area, though. That honor belonged to the merging of I270, US23, and SR315 on the north end. It is now undergoing a major rebuild that will hopefully improve upon things. We’ll see.
I liked the exit signs in British parking structures. “Way Out”
About a mile from my door, US 46 (carrying traffic from the GW Bridge and Bergen county) and State Route 3 (traffic from the Lincoln Tunnel) merge. Five total lanes merge into 3. After decades of fender benders and worse, they are finally getting started on fixing it.
Instead of a picture of the current interchange, thought you’d enjoy the map that accompanies the plan.
I live in Southern California. My whole life is a traffic nightmare.
The first time I visited Los Angeles I was amused to find that the radio does traffic reports all day long!
Here in Buffalo you just need about an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. It really is just rush hour.
Gone but not forgotten close by on Gallivan Blvd., Tom.
Now how many people can we stuff in this car . . . and who gets the trunk?
Yes, but that’s a matter of jams and back-ups.
True story: After years of driving here and switching from an SUV to a small sedan, I started losing my nerve on the road. Why I am so distrustful of other drivers? Why am I so uncertain about freeway entrances, etc?
Then, we went for LA — where I’d driven for years without issue — for a weekend and viola, problem solved! “Oh,” I realized. “The problem isn’t me; it’s driving with people in Massachusetts!”
It serves you people right for putting a definite article in front of highway numbers.
What I’ve noticed on those rare occasions when I’ve driven the LA freeway system is that traffic may move slowly, but it keeps moving.
The thing that drives me nutz here is that people come to a dead stop on the freeway. Barring a collision, there is no reason any vehicle should ever be fully stopped in a traffic lane on a freeway.
Even if the car in front is stopped?
Our local (western Washington state) idiot road designers apparently believe traffic circles won’t suck if they don’t call them traffic circles, so they call them “roundabouts.”
So veddy veddy British, I guess, not to mention pretentious. That’s supposed to somehow improve them? Nope. They still suck.
I had a relative who was a contractor in MA for many years. His view was that any construction project had to last at least 5 years, or there wouldn’t be money enough in it to cover the requisite graft to unions and governmental inspectors.
I believe there are actually technical differences between roundabouts, rotaries, and traffic circles, but that there are also regional variants as well. I rather like actual roundabouts, at least by this definition.
He gave it that long? Squish. ;)
An example of surprising good design in my neck of the woods is this roundabout, which is (amazingly) nearly a half-mile around.
A roundabout is a circle with an extra syllable to confuse drivers.
They should have known not to cross the streams:
Public—”Excuse me, Egon, you said crossing the streams was bad. You’re going to endanger us!”
Highway engineers—”Not necessarily. There’s definitely a very slim chance we’ll survive.”
Planning commission—”I love this plan! I’m excited to be a part of it! Let’s do it!”
The exit signs in California just read, “Duuuuude!”
It’s turtles all the way down. Why is the car in front stopped?
Well, for one thing, you have “Swiss drivers,” while around here we have . . . not Swiss drivers, and second, we seem to have plenty of drivers ready to drive aggressively at any opportunity. Ignoring traffic signs and bluffing, or failing to merge or yield, that kind of behavior seems to bloom in roundabouts. Maybe we’ll get better at them over time, they’re pretty new in these parts.
Thank you! I learned something here. Seriously, I had simply thought the designers had gone to some professional conference and picked up new and trendy jargon to throw at us.