Why Are Boston Streets So Confusing?
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Date: 2023-09-27
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Comments and reviews: 19
Siah
Fantastic video with a fair historic perspective on Boston's organic development.
Boston is delightfully illegible. Whereas in places with defined grids like Dallas (great city, Chicago (World class city, or New York (I'll get back to you on that, any tourist has the illusion of easy driving due to the highly legible grid, Boston requires a certain degree of familiarity, and frankly discourages driving unless you know what you are doing, which is good. Driving in a big city should be daunting, as there is a lot to be aware of, and less traffic means less in the way of emergency vehicles, deliveries, and most importantly, me! :P Beacon, Boylston, Tremont, and Storrow are all relatively direct through the city. (Storrow is a tragedy, the woman who's name the roadway bears? She EXPLICITLY DID NOT WANT a highway along the river, and they built it pretty much right after she died, look it up)
At under 50 square miles, (48. something, just over 100km 2) Boston city limits are TINY, and the area considered Boston is really the historic city center; Boston is only a small city in the jurisdictional sense, as the surrounding cities are all mostly suburbs of Boston, or in the case of some cities, Cambridge especially, still part of the urban core. Between the T and walking, you really shouldn't have to drive anyways. The back bay's lovely grid of streets are excellent for evening strolls/jogging; the cars mostly get stuck on Storrow, hahaha. I really only drive around the rest of Boston, you know, the parts that aren't called Boston, like Brookline, Danvers, Newtown, and Watertown.
Besides, its not like every city has a perfect grid everywhere. Even perfectly planned cities have their quirks: The Washington monument is off center from the grid by a hundred feet or so. I'm remined of that awful ancient meme of the Manhattan grid vs Boston's road network. It's kinda telling that they didn't use say, lower Manhattan and the back bay as the point of comparison. Besides, what kind of psycho drives regularly in Midtown?
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Fantastic video with a fair historic perspective on Boston's organic development.
Boston is delightfully illegible. Whereas in places with defined grids like Dallas (great city, Chicago (World class city, or New York (I'll get back to you on that, any tourist has the illusion of easy driving due to the highly legible grid, Boston requires a certain degree of familiarity, and frankly discourages driving unless you know what you are doing, which is good. Driving in a big city should be daunting, as there is a lot to be aware of, and less traffic means less in the way of emergency vehicles, deliveries, and most importantly, me! :P Beacon, Boylston, Tremont, and Storrow are all relatively direct through the city. (Storrow is a tragedy, the woman who's name the roadway bears? She EXPLICITLY DID NOT WANT a highway along the river, and they built it pretty much right after she died, look it up)
At under 50 square miles, (48. something, just over 100km 2) Boston city limits are TINY, and the area considered Boston is really the historic city center; Boston is only a small city in the jurisdictional sense, as the surrounding cities are all mostly suburbs of Boston, or in the case of some cities, Cambridge especially, still part of the urban core. Between the T and walking, you really shouldn't have to drive anyways. The back bay's lovely grid of streets are excellent for evening strolls/jogging; the cars mostly get stuck on Storrow, hahaha. I really only drive around the rest of Boston, you know, the parts that aren't called Boston, like Brookline, Danvers, Newtown, and Watertown.
Besides, its not like every city has a perfect grid everywhere. Even perfectly planned cities have their quirks: The Washington monument is off center from the grid by a hundred feet or so. I'm remined of that awful ancient meme of the Manhattan grid vs Boston's road network. It's kinda telling that they didn't use say, lower Manhattan and the back bay as the point of comparison. Besides, what kind of psycho drives regularly in Midtown?
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Colorme
Thank you for an excellent explanation. About those bans on gasoline-powered vehicles. When California's Governor did that, you realize that he also accidentally (I hope) banned hybrid-electric vehicles because most politicians are law school and Poli Sci graduates (in other words, idiots. As ironically hilarious as that is in and of itself, the bigger picture reveals that CA politicians are even dumber than you think. The Gov ordered the ban (starting in 2035) before EVs were ready for prime time, AFTER they tore down their nuclear and other power plants, AFTER Texas left them in the dust in wind energy generation, and AFTER they spent billions on HSR but BEFORE said HSR has earned a single penny at the farebox (they're going to erase a significant source of revenue from fuel taxes and pick the pockets of their citizens instead, prompting even more of them to take their wealth and tax revenue to states with sane, moderate policies. They've been suffering from brownouts and rolling blackouts since the turn of the century but have done NOTHING to bring more capacity online. The ban is an empty virtue-posturing gesture that panders to a microscopic minority of climate alarmists and is yet another example of that once-great state shooting itself in the proverbial foot. The big auto manufacturers have been quietly dialing back EV production because the economics just don't work without massive governmental intervention, which translates to: Each and every taxpayer who does NOT own an EV is subsidizing those who buy them. They've been robbing the poor to help the wealthy buy Teslas and other overpriced EVs. THAT is what you voted for!
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Thank you for an excellent explanation. About those bans on gasoline-powered vehicles. When California's Governor did that, you realize that he also accidentally (I hope) banned hybrid-electric vehicles because most politicians are law school and Poli Sci graduates (in other words, idiots. As ironically hilarious as that is in and of itself, the bigger picture reveals that CA politicians are even dumber than you think. The Gov ordered the ban (starting in 2035) before EVs were ready for prime time, AFTER they tore down their nuclear and other power plants, AFTER Texas left them in the dust in wind energy generation, and AFTER they spent billions on HSR but BEFORE said HSR has earned a single penny at the farebox (they're going to erase a significant source of revenue from fuel taxes and pick the pockets of their citizens instead, prompting even more of them to take their wealth and tax revenue to states with sane, moderate policies. They've been suffering from brownouts and rolling blackouts since the turn of the century but have done NOTHING to bring more capacity online. The ban is an empty virtue-posturing gesture that panders to a microscopic minority of climate alarmists and is yet another example of that once-great state shooting itself in the proverbial foot. The big auto manufacturers have been quietly dialing back EV production because the economics just don't work without massive governmental intervention, which translates to: Each and every taxpayer who does NOT own an EV is subsidizing those who buy them. They've been robbing the poor to help the wealthy buy Teslas and other overpriced EVs. THAT is what you voted for!
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rjh00
2: 49 why not just rotate the grid 45 degrees? You would have a single main road that goes from the edge of the hill on the NorthEast peninsula, passes right next to Blaxston's property and then all the way down to the SouthWestern point. Then from the other direction you would have one main road coming from NorthWest along the hill to the north of Blaxton and meeting at a 90 degree to the first main road. Now for the third main road, you start it near the east corner of where Blaxton and the hill north of Blaxton meet and go diagionally SouthEast past the marsh south of the spring.
6: 15 I don't want to say a roundabout is a solution to every traffic problem but it seems to me like a roundabout would be a easily solution for this, no matter what angle the roads come from they end up meeting the roundabout at 90 degree, you only have one direction to pay attention to for approaching cars and it slows down traffic to make everything easier and it reduces having to wait for the other legs to clear because all you need is a gap big enough for your own vehicle.
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2: 49 why not just rotate the grid 45 degrees? You would have a single main road that goes from the edge of the hill on the NorthEast peninsula, passes right next to Blaxston's property and then all the way down to the SouthWestern point. Then from the other direction you would have one main road coming from NorthWest along the hill to the north of Blaxton and meeting at a 90 degree to the first main road. Now for the third main road, you start it near the east corner of where Blaxton and the hill north of Blaxton meet and go diagionally SouthEast past the marsh south of the spring.
6: 15 I don't want to say a roundabout is a solution to every traffic problem but it seems to me like a roundabout would be a easily solution for this, no matter what angle the roads come from they end up meeting the roundabout at 90 degree, you only have one direction to pay attention to for approaching cars and it slows down traffic to make everything easier and it reduces having to wait for the other legs to clear because all you need is a gap big enough for your own vehicle.
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Martin
I feel like ground news doesn't really work outside the USA, because with the political leaning it always seems to be projecting political leanings based on an american perspective for what is right, left or center. Also, that doesn't include many relevant categries for political leanings, that exist in other countries. Furthermore, political positions, that many in the USA would categorise as being leftists would be part of the centrist, or conservative spectrum in other countries. And so on and so on. Whenever I give it a try, it seems to confuse the politics of my country with those of the USA and I don't really gain any insight on what is going on across the political spectrum in my own country, or what biases there might be.
It's good for reading up on american news though.
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I feel like ground news doesn't really work outside the USA, because with the political leaning it always seems to be projecting political leanings based on an american perspective for what is right, left or center. Also, that doesn't include many relevant categries for political leanings, that exist in other countries. Furthermore, political positions, that many in the USA would categorise as being leftists would be part of the centrist, or conservative spectrum in other countries. And so on and so on. Whenever I give it a try, it seems to confuse the politics of my country with those of the USA and I don't really gain any insight on what is going on across the political spectrum in my own country, or what biases there might be.
It's good for reading up on american news though.
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Michael
I love Calgary Alberta where I live. It's more or less a big grid with numbered roads. All the avenues go east-west and streets go north south. There's Centre Street at the centre-ish and as you go further out in east or west the street numbers get higher. All numbered avenues have Memorial Blvd and is the basis for the numbered avenues. Only thing you have to watch with addresses is making sure you designate which quadrant of the city you're referring to as there's four possible locations with an address of 400 4 Ave. Lastly the last two digits of an address is where it is on the block, and numbers before tell you what the intersecting avenue or street is. If it doesn't conform to the grid at all, it gets a regular name.
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I love Calgary Alberta where I live. It's more or less a big grid with numbered roads. All the avenues go east-west and streets go north south. There's Centre Street at the centre-ish and as you go further out in east or west the street numbers get higher. All numbered avenues have Memorial Blvd and is the basis for the numbered avenues. Only thing you have to watch with addresses is making sure you designate which quadrant of the city you're referring to as there's four possible locations with an address of 400 4 Ave. Lastly the last two digits of an address is where it is on the block, and numbers before tell you what the intersecting avenue or street is. If it doesn't conform to the grid at all, it gets a regular name.
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Matt
I do think it makes sense for Boston to emphasize alternatives to driving instead of trying to make the city much easier to drive in.
Boston has the basis for a great public transit system but it's been underfunded and neglected for many years, and has physically deteriorated as a result. We're paying back that engineering debt now. It's not easy. There need to be big improvements, and everyone knows what they are: better circumferential transit, more and better links between subway lines, some kind of Amtrak/commuter rail link between North Station and South Station. Most of them aren't even being seriously planned now while the city and the region deal with the deficiencies in what's already there.
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I do think it makes sense for Boston to emphasize alternatives to driving instead of trying to make the city much easier to drive in.
Boston has the basis for a great public transit system but it's been underfunded and neglected for many years, and has physically deteriorated as a result. We're paying back that engineering debt now. It's not easy. There need to be big improvements, and everyone knows what they are: better circumferential transit, more and better links between subway lines, some kind of Amtrak/commuter rail link between North Station and South Station. Most of them aren't even being seriously planned now while the city and the region deal with the deficiencies in what's already there.
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hmalec
Boston is such an interesting case study for a city trying to build out its bike lanes, but it struggles from disjointed and uncomfortable bike lanes which the city hall is trying to address. As someone that had friends in Allston and lived in beacon hill, it was faster to bike than take public transit. What made the bike commute especially frustrating was that you d go from great protected lanes along Comm ave to uncomfortable shared roadways around Kenmore square and non-existent bike infrastructure in beacon hill. It has so much potential, but needs to dedicate funding to its public transit, rather than sinking everything into MassDOT
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Boston is such an interesting case study for a city trying to build out its bike lanes, but it struggles from disjointed and uncomfortable bike lanes which the city hall is trying to address. As someone that had friends in Allston and lived in beacon hill, it was faster to bike than take public transit. What made the bike commute especially frustrating was that you d go from great protected lanes along Comm ave to uncomfortable shared roadways around Kenmore square and non-existent bike infrastructure in beacon hill. It has so much potential, but needs to dedicate funding to its public transit, rather than sinking everything into MassDOT
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city_beautiful
This is considered confusing? Just because it isn't a grid?
Adding some modal filters to eliminate unsafe interactions where motor vehicles are coming from too many directions seems like a good idea. Maybe convert some streets to one-way traffic to eliminate some more conflict points. Priority should be given to improving safety, not driver convenience, so skip the extra road signs.
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This is considered confusing? Just because it isn't a grid?
Adding some modal filters to eliminate unsafe interactions where motor vehicles are coming from too many directions seems like a good idea. Maybe convert some streets to one-way traffic to eliminate some more conflict points. Priority should be given to improving safety, not driver convenience, so skip the extra road signs.
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Ilkka
I find that grids if they are longer than a few blocks never make for a cosy city. Large grids will make every street feel primarily like a thoroughfare. Odd angles and/or bendy streets are a necessity for cosiness, no matter if it's a suburban area of single family homes or a countryside village or a central area of a metropolis with skyscrapers or in fact anything in between.
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I find that grids if they are longer than a few blocks never make for a cosy city. Large grids will make every street feel primarily like a thoroughfare. Odd angles and/or bendy streets are a necessity for cosiness, no matter if it's a suburban area of single family homes or a countryside village or a central area of a metropolis with skyscrapers or in fact anything in between.
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Chris
I drove Uber as a side gig for fun in 2015 when it was starting to pick up. I would always drop people off downtown, but rarely ever picked people up downtown cause it was such a mess and you didn't know if they were in the front or back of the building. Also people would be double parked and cyclists going every where. Glad I don't do it any more but it was def interesting.
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I drove Uber as a side gig for fun in 2015 when it was starting to pick up. I would always drop people off downtown, but rarely ever picked people up downtown cause it was such a mess and you didn't know if they were in the front or back of the building. Also people would be double parked and cyclists going every where. Glad I don't do it any more but it was def interesting.
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raverdeath100
Before the age of indutrialization, topography ruled city development. most European cities are hundreds if not thousands of years old and therefore followed the hills, flood plains and rivers. not surprising that Boston, a city built by Europeans (British mainly) follows the same pattern.
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Before the age of indutrialization, topography ruled city development. most European cities are hundreds if not thousands of years old and therefore followed the hills, flood plains and rivers. not surprising that Boston, a city built by Europeans (British mainly) follows the same pattern.
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Venator
Reducing options for turning always makes it more confusing and stressful to drive as it makes it more difficult to find your destination, it is much easier to navigate when some streets are closed to cars entirely than when they are arbitrarily restricted from some directions.
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Reducing options for turning always makes it more confusing and stressful to drive as it makes it more difficult to find your destination, it is much easier to navigate when some streets are closed to cars entirely than when they are arbitrarily restricted from some directions.
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dmnddog74
Boston owes no apologies or needs to make any concession to car drivers. As you mentioned towards the end of the video, the city is 400 yo, and its organic street pattern is part of its charm. Drivers can park and ride and take the T. A Chicagoan writing here.
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Boston owes no apologies or needs to make any concession to car drivers. As you mentioned towards the end of the video, the city is 400 yo, and its organic street pattern is part of its charm. Drivers can park and ride and take the T. A Chicagoan writing here.
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David
There is no reason to drive in downtown Boston: it is a compact, walking city, and it has public transportation system consisting of subways, LRV s, buses and ferry s. It also possesses an impressive demographic density unknown to most major American cities.
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There is no reason to drive in downtown Boston: it is a compact, walking city, and it has public transportation system consisting of subways, LRV s, buses and ferry s. It also possesses an impressive demographic density unknown to most major American cities.
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Stan
How do freight & logistics work in cities like Boston & Philadelphia, which are clearly not friendly to 18 wheel tractor trailer trucks? Do higher delivery costs put local, high volume businesses at a disadvantage compared to competitors in outlying cities?
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How do freight & logistics work in cities like Boston & Philadelphia, which are clearly not friendly to 18 wheel tractor trailer trucks? Do higher delivery costs put local, high volume businesses at a disadvantage compared to competitors in outlying cities?
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Richard
My wife then girl friend thought we could drive into Boston for the day. I laughed and told her we'll be taking the train in. She didn't understand until we go closer to the city. Not only is every highway and roads gridlocked, the roads are confusing.
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My wife then girl friend thought we could drive into Boston for the day. I laughed and told her we'll be taking the train in. She didn't understand until we go closer to the city. Not only is every highway and roads gridlocked, the roads are confusing.
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Kirbyoto2098
As someone who lives in Central Mass, I refuse to drive into Boston and always take the train. So frankly I think the city's design is doing something right: simply make driving unpalatable enough and people will be forced to abandon it.
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As someone who lives in Central Mass, I refuse to drive into Boston and always take the train. So frankly I think the city's design is doing something right: simply make driving unpalatable enough and people will be forced to abandon it.
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Troels
As a European I found Boston relatively easy to navigate on foot because to some extent you orientate yourself by instinct in an organic street grid. I tend to get a little lost in chessboard cities where everything looks the same.
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As a European I found Boston relatively easy to navigate on foot because to some extent you orientate yourself by instinct in an organic street grid. I tend to get a little lost in chessboard cities where everything looks the same.
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Vicy
just because you can't drive on it, doesn't mean it's a bad design. organic designs has so much more benefits.
unless you count everywhere else on earth bad cities, by which you mean bad cities made the modern world
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just because you can't drive on it, doesn't mean it's a bad design. organic designs has so much more benefits.
unless you count everywhere else on earth bad cities, by which you mean bad cities made the modern world
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