Well the Boston Glob published an uninteresting article today. Based on the blog post of a cartographer who moved to Cambridge some time in 2008 picked his five least favorite traffic patterns in the Greater Boston area and posted how hard it is to two completely random points in each square.
Can't get there from here - unless you walk
First off, this is what I posted on the Glob web site.
Well I'm not a cartographer, I'm a safety engineer. And as someone who has traveled all those routes I can tell you that traffic patterns are not there to make getting from point A to point B super fast and easy. They are there to reduce accidents, ease congestion, give pedestrians a safer area to walk through.
Think of the Kenmore Square example. Could anyone imagine what the area would look like if people were allowed to turn left. The road is on a slight hill, the turn is completely blind, and a very tight angle.
Besides, what idiot does not know to go around Landmark center and cross the bridge?
Yes I knew most of these places on first look. (Okay Somerville caught me) But then, I'm from here. On the rare occasion I have traveled to areas that were built with cars in mind are unpleasant to say the least.
Has the author of this article/blog even been in these places? Who would drive from point A to point B in his examples. And if your going through the area, that is not the way a GPS would send you. Maybe some of those real cheap ones might. The same ones that send U-Haul vans down Storrow Drive every Labor Day weekend.
And gosh darn it. The water ways were that way when we found it. They were not "placed" there just to be inconvenient. They were there FIRST.
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I will be back in a little bit with part two, showing each of the five areas he picked on, and the real ways someone would go if they were foolish enough to want to make the trip from point A to point B.
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