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by d0ugie 2979 days ago
I drive from Connecticut to Manhattan and back during rush hour and have been reliant on Waze's aggressive and inventive routing decisions that often take me through quiet neighborhoods to hop from one highway to another, dodging traffic jams I presume. It almost always gets me there by its eta.

On one hand I'm sympathetic to these people (my wife and I are house-shopping and one of our factors is the house being on a quiet road, also I don't particularly like out-of-state drivers in my town, for example New Yorkers don't realize you can turn on red in Connecticut, drives me nuts), on the other hand I can't be late to my shrink sessions - my guy ain't cheap!

4 comments

>I drive from Connecticut to Manhattan and back during rush hour

My first instinct is to want to punish people like you for choosing a lifestyle that is so outrageously unfriendly for the environment, but my frustration is tempered by the fact that your hellish commute is probably punishment enough.

No, your first instinct was right, as I have other options, greener options, that include mass transit as well as, I suppose, video conferencing, but opting instead to drive, that makes me part of the problem.

I don't know why but that never occurred to me until now. So surely this isn't the only related area in which I have room for improvement.

From someone who lives on a road routinely used to cut about 15 seconds off people's commute (seriously), I have two asks: obey the speed limit, and stop at the stop signs.

That's all we're asking. As I'm typing this, another car has blasted through the stop signs at well over the 25mph posted limit. Time to give another call to the local PD.

Stop signs are shitty and inefficient traffic calming measures. Call your pd but then hang up and call your city planners and ask for better road features, e.g roundabouts and other physical features

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/26/to-get-safer-streets-...

The stupid thing is, we all know it. The city planners didn't want to put stop signs in, but my neighbors demanded it. It was stop signs or speed bumps, and the majority ruled in favor of stop signs (not that speed bumps would have been better).

Really, for our street - which goes between a rural highway and a major local artery - the only solutions are to give drivers another more convenient way to cut through, or to shut off the entrance from the highway, forcing them to go another 1/4 mile to the stop light as intended.

I imagine it'll further influence neighborhood design to be more punitive to this behavior (more cul de sacs and neighborhoods with a single entrance).

I saw an article talking about we often look at day-to-day congestion, but they looked at how different cities dealt with interruptions better than others. Cities with lots of back roads faired a lot better during a road closure, while other cities just stopped.

What's the problem with the Metro North New Haven Line?
I was going to cite crosstown traffic on a bus to get from the 125th Park Ave station to the 90s on West End and back but Google Maps is showing that if I took the 4 train to 149th to catch the 2 back down to 96th I'd come out ahead time-wise (and without road rage) versus driving. Nice, thanks buddy!