Man! I hate driving in Boston!

I can't do it. It's too damn confusing. I get lost all the damn time. I have no idea which direction is which. I no longer have the mountains always looming to the West. I look like a damn tourist, having to carry a map with me everywhere I go!

Plus, these damn drivers are morons! People just blatantly running red lights. Left turns are never done correctly. People making one lane into two, or two into three. It's driving me insane! :grr:

I moved to Boston when I was 22. Boston drivers are insane! I got lost constantly. Well I still get lost constantly but I have gotten better. By the end of the year I had figured out the few major cross streets and how to get to the few places I wanted to go. My advice is to get a very old, dented car. The drivers back off when they see that you have a car that you don't really care if it get's in a fender bender.

An example of crazy Boston driving. All the lights had gone out in one of those awful traffic circles. Sane drivers would have taken turns and everyone would have gotten out of the circle. Instead Boston drivers just refused to take turns or give way. We all sat in that stupid circle for an hour and a half until a police man showed up and directed traffic. I've lived lots of places and I have never seen anything like this.

I got sooo lost coming back from Western Mass yesterday because I accidently took the wrong exit from a rotary.

I usually take the T, but sometimes you just have to drive.

It's annoying in a different way,but much less stressful,IMHO

It's a system to separate the weak from the strong. :-) Then there's also the theory that many of the oldest streets were just paved cow's paths. I think it's a state tradition to avoid helpful street signage as well...

Of course, the Big Dig making a vast mess of the place doesn't help either. Boston was once described as a city of "wayward drivers and fearless pedestrians." My problem is when I travel to other cities and am not mindful of the habit of just walking in front of traffic without regard for the crosswalks. This is accepted, and expected, behavior in the Hub but a good way to kill yourself elsewhere...

...and know exactly how you feel.

I've only been here for two weeks. So far I'm going crazy :crazy:

Talk about being insane.

it was a cloudy day, and I was there on a buisness trip and decided to drive around and explore the town a bit.....

...got TOTALLY LOST. Never been so lost before. And I even had a street map!

I started seeing the "Masspike" signs and followed them till i got on the tollroad and took it west out of town to the beltway...to my exit.

I was completely befuddled. Not in the older part of town..like Charleston or the downtown area..but more out the neighborhoods.....I took Commenwealth Ave west and got totally lost.....

I didnt find the drivers to be that bad, though. California has some pretty crappy drivers, as does Dayton. Boston drivers where aggressive...but thats just big city driving anywhere u go...

Most of my urban driving has been around DC and the Beltway can be a nightmare, but Boston has the meanest, craziest drivers anywhere. Surprisingly, LA and NYC haven't ever seemed very bad to drive in. SF is a piece of cake, with folks very politely taking turns at all those four way stops. I'd put Houston and Atlanta under Boston as next scariest places to drive, worse than LA, NYC or Chicago. YMMV.

I did not know that sane adults could behave that way. People right up on one another. Some one actually hit my car. I was there alone and I was miserable and cried. I have driven in Atlanta, New York, New Jersey, Kansas City, Minnepolis, Chicago, and NONE even APPROACHES the nightmare I had in Boston. TAKE THE T!!!

It does suck. Especially when the clubs you prefer to go to are next to Fenway Park and u go out clubbing on the night the Sox play the Yankees...

...so I wouldn't dare drive there. I ambled through Chinatown and a few other neighborhoods before finally stumbling on Filene's.

> I ambled through Chinatown and a few other neighborhoods before
> finally stumbling on Filene's.

Ohh! The "Combat Zone" (AKA Boston's "red light district").

Well, don't worry, it's now safe to try that walk again.
Gentrification (mostly by the ethnic Chinese) has eliminated
most of the old "Combat Zone" along Washington Street. There
are just two strip-joints (off on a side strip) and one
"adult book/peep show" store left, and they won't last long
at the rate things are changing. Now, it's mostly up-market
Asian food places mixing with upcoming over-priced high-rise
apartments.

Atlant

which is great training for Nascar.

I have driven all over the country and Boston has the rudest and most aggressive drivers by far. I have a much easier time driving in NYC!

I think it has a lot to do with the terrible traffic and the number of transplants due to the universities. In the next few weeks, I will have many moments of frustration going 10 MPH behind an MIT student who has no idea where they're going. Not to mention the pedestrians who walk against green lights, cyclists who flout the traffic laws, and the constant road construction.

There, I feel better now!

I use to drive to Boston all the time back and forth with my Dad in the hospital...but this past summer being away for 20 years it all came back to me driving there even on route 128 on a Friday night rush hour absolutely insane how corky the drivers are...that's the biggest thing I don't miss. The drivers really lack respect and patience, becareful driving while you are going to law school there.

Proud of You! :hi:

I've always lived here so I guess I should say ourselves. LOL We Boston drivers have traffic "rules" of our own.

How many times have you been cut off so far? Uh oh! If you're carrying a map everywhere, the other drivers will know you're from out of town and cutting you off pretty much be a requirement. :-)

BTW, I LOVE rotaries!

:-)

And how can ANYONE love rotaries!? :-)

You can move through them smoothly; the alternative would be an intersection with lights that you have to wait at. For some rotaries, the replacement intersection would involve many streets, each with its own light, and you'd wait forever at your red light before it turned green.

When I was younger, there was a big rotary in Watertown Square, and I had no problem going through the square. They took it out, put in a zillion lights, marked the lanes so you could only go in one direction from a particular lane, whether it made sense or not. I totally avoid the square now; it takes forever to go through it because of waiting at the lights (sometimes through two cycles at one light) and I can never remember which lane you have to be in to go in which direction. Even if I'm going to the square, I take side streets to get in the back way.

The only time I have problems with rotaries is when one of the roads dumping into it is a highway; now that's scary, when people are flying at highway speeds into the rotary.

:-)

but the thing about Boston is that the city is so old the streets are just frighteningly TOO NARROW! AND THEY WIND AROUND IN THE MOST UNPREDICTABLE WAYS!

BUT... I love it! :)

Funny how it comes back. I used to drive there all the time - in fact I used to drive drunk there in the seventies when I was still an active alkie. My daughter was at Mass Eye and Ear for 12 days in February. It all came back. There was a pothole in Kendall Square that tried to eat my car every single time...:eyes:

you follow the 'airport' signs (this way to the airport, white plane on a blue background with - with arrow) THEN you get to "Tobin Bridge this way"/"Sumner Tunnel (or what's the other tunnels' name) that way....and it doesn't tell you if you need to take the bridge or the tunnel to the airport! Apparently one must be a native or just 'born' with such knowledge to know how which way the airport is!

(just in case anyone's 'wondering'....take the tunnel ;-) )

The Sumner is paired up with its newer neighbor, the Lt. Somebody
Callahan tunnel. The Callahan goes north to the airport and is free;
the Sumner goes south into the city and costs the toll.

The other tunnel is the Ted Williams Tunnel (the "TWT"). It runs both
ways between the airport and Southie (South Boston); the toll is only
charged when you're escaping from the airport.

Atlant

The only place in my entire life I actually had to pull over and calm down. No signs. One-way streets are apparently "advisory" Few lights. Circles with traffic taking shorcuts straight across or making left turns. Got rear-ended at one of the rare red lights since I was stupid enough to stop. Much worse than Paris, but not quite as deadly as Portugal.

Sat first in line in the middle of eight lanes of traffic in front of the Vatican with another eight lanes of traffic facing us. No one could go straight, but no hint which way anyone was turning. Felt like a scrimmage line. It was a scrimmage line. Balls out and go for a long one when the light turned green.

That was a long time ago, but I heard it's no better now.

Anyway, I've been to Boston, and it's a blood sport there, but here in Joisey it's not much better. Or Long Island. Or Westchester. PA aint a hell of a lot better. NYC is a break from all of these.

The signs here, the ones that aren't hidden behind bushes, tell you everything except what you want to know. Like which one of the 6 lanes gets you on the road to Paramus from the GW bridge. Or that trick with the Palisades Parkway. Some things you just have to know. A friend drove up from Florida, and he got here fine but it took him an hour and a half to find the Goethals Bridge 15 minutes away.

People are always asking directions. One of the local diners even thought about having directions to Ikea and Newark Airport printed on the menu.

Delaware is nice. I couldn't believe it when two lanes of traffic stopped to actually let me over when I had about a hundred feet to get from an off ramp on the left to a turn on the right. Spoiled I was-- never saw that happen anywhere north of there.

and I would be a nervous wreck by the time I got from the airport to my hotel. So the last time I went, I told them, "Look, you want me to come, you get someone to pick me up. I'm never driving in that town again!' And the actually hired a driver in a nice big Lincoln, holding up a sign with my name on it an everything. Now that's the way to get around Beantown!

...they aren't called "rotaries" -- they're called "traffic circles."

Really, it's true. The way to fit in in Boston is to drive while constantly leaning on your horn and giving people the finger.

I don´t think driving here is so bad....there is a method to the madness. I just hate people who speedup from behind you as not to let you change into their lane. I had one guy so pissed off at me from New Hampshire that he touched my bumper purposely at 65mph in his "tiny-man complex" truck.

:toast:

watch where airplane traffic is coming and going and you will get a decent sense of east, north, and south depending on where you are. Which will show you west by default.

Ya cahn't get theah from heah.

:)

Keeps those damn New Yorkers out.

It also cracks me up how out-of-towners are completely befuddled by rotaries. I once saw a car with Illinois plates siting at the entrance to a rotary while the confused driver tried to figure out what to do. Much honking and one-finger salutes were given to this poor guy while he sat there and sat there while people merged around him.

:evilgrin:

Boston driving really isn't much different than driving in any
city, at least once you know your way around.

You want to "flow", so you need to sort of let go and "use
the force". If you get too tense, you'll choke up and people
will sense your fear, and then you're dead meat: you'll get
stuck in a lane that ends abruptly and they will never,
ever let you merge back into the traffic flow. Never.
Seriously. They've had to send in emergency food and water
to people from the plains states who've been trapped in
just this situation for weeks!

It's the "learning your way around" part that's really
challenging. The fundamental problem is that Boston
"curves around" on its penninsula, so even if you were
definitely going northeast and you've never made any
obvious turns, you may now have turned almost a full
270 degrees around so you're now going west after
momentarily going east and then south. And because
traffic may move so slowly, the sun may have moved right
around the sky with you, so you can't count on that clue
either.

Plus, we change the names of the streets in mid-street just
to confuse you. Cambridge Street becomes Tremont Street.
Kneeland Street becomes Stuart Street and then you end
up on either Columbus Avenue (which IS NOT in the
Italian North End!) or Huntington Avenue.

And yes, The Big Dig re-arranges all the streets every
week-end or so. But that just keeps us on our toes.

It all does make a sort of weird sense after a few years,
and you actually do develop the Zen Zone of Boston driving.
The challenge then is to not bounce off the Iowans still
stuck in the lane that dead-ended.

Atlant

Truth.

And I've driven all over the U.S. and Europe.

> Wors[t] drivers on the planet. And I've driven all over the
> U.S. and Europe.

I doubt you've ever been driven to Linate airport in Milano by my
friend Carlos, a crazy Portugeuse guy who now lives in Paris.

No driving experience in my entire life of almost 48 years has
ever come close to comparing to that one wild ride.

Atlant

I've never driven with your friend Carlos. But I'll try to avoid him if I ever see him on the road.

> But I'll try to avoid him if I ever see him on the road.

A sound choice!

Atlant

I've been driving in Boston for ages. I feel I can take on anything now!

The one thing that did annoy me was non-commuters. The average commuter has a plan and drives the same plan every day. All it takes is one New Yawker to really screw it up! :evilgrin:

And the rotaries are great if everyone knows what they're doing. But they don't so therein lies the problem.

Eddie is always there in his shiny black limo on the fourth floor of the parking garage ready to take me to my Waltham office.

There is no frigging way in hell I am driving with those nuts.

Traffic is always screwed up on Yankees game days because NYCers have no idea how to drive in Boston.

The drivers are *SO* much better here.

:eyes:

i.e. bluff the commies (the other drivers) into thinking that you are so nuts that you might actually drop the bomb on them (hit them) so that they become terrified of you and back off:) for example, when someone tries to speed up on my right to cut me off when we're coming to a merge and I have the right of way, I just pretend that I don't see them. This works wonders, if you look at someone, you've often lost your edge. But if you just speed up and act like you don't see them, and occassionally even graze their bumper from time to time as a friendly reminder (I have an old sh*tbox), they will not come near you. this really helps if you have a rotten car that you don't give a damn about (such piece of mind too). I've been here 2 years, after 2 weeks (literally, had never driven in a big city before, moved out here on my own, had no idea how to use public transportation) i stopped into a cvs and they had one of those blood pressure testing devices (the chair with the arm thingy on it<don't know the name:)>) to test my blood pressure to see if I really was getting hypertension from driving:) I don't suggest emulating tricky Dick often, but this is an exception:)

If you're a Tom Clancy fan, you know what I'm talking about...

> Just execute a "Crazy Ivan" every so often

That's why the tractor-trailors now have those signs on the back
that say "If you can't see my mirrors, I can't see you!"

That way, you know when you're in his "baffles".

Atlant

confusing.