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Detroit, 5:57 AM
Thu Dec 10
26 posts in the last 24 hours
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With Austin, Portland, and Seattle on the list...how much of those cities' problems are caused because of "green" bullshit preventing a proper road network.
/has lived in both Portland and Austin, traffic there does truly suck
D/FW is bad, but having been born-and-raised here, as well as driving an airport shuttle and tour bus back in college, I know most of the (some are now gone) surface street secrets.
12/08/09
Same stuff in Atlanta no new roads or additional lanes until air quality improves.
Yeah 600,000 idling cars pollute less than moving ones.
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No kidding.
On the east side of town, Ed Bluestein Blvd., is a complete and utter joke.
We'll just not discuss I-35 through that town.
12/08/09
Sometimes the smart answer, which is also the easiest, gets ignored completely.
This reminds me, at what point is truck traffic going to be banned or significantly restricted during rush-time. "Hour", it ain't.
I noticed, today, on I-20, because of truck traffic, there was a huge secondary backup because they were three abreast where it is four lanes.
Bastards. Maybe intentional, maybe not, douchey regardless.
12/08/09
Afaik, at least in portland and seattle, there's not many places to put more roads, and there's little political will to put them in, so traffic is bad. There's a little bit of "green bullshit", but there's also a lot of noticing that places like LA and SFO which have tried to build out of gridlock still have problems, so why bother? it's a lot cheaper to not build new roads and have gridlock than to build new roads and have gridlock. That and there's that attitude in both Seattle and Portland: "fuck you, you moved to the suburbs, so don't ask me to pay for more roads for you to drive to the city to take my job."
12/09/09
Then why are taxes so freakin' high up there?
I thought my property tax bill had a typo in it when we bought a house. The income taxes aren't gentle, either, in Oregon.
Beaverton is the only town west of the Mississippi with a municipal income tax!
Oh, the stupidity.
Granted, the water gets in the way, but man, this planning should have been done decades ago!
Addendum: any state which does not all pumping of your own gasoline is so anti-Jalop, it should slide into the netherworld. New Jersey...what's that smell...I can understand why it has 'full-serve'.
/holds nose to the side and says in the best Tony Soprano voice, "whatchagonnado...."
12/09/09
Also keep in mind that OR doesn't have Sales Tax. So they get it from the homeowners and dutifully employed instead of the spenders.
12/09/09
True. And they don't get it from tourists, either.
/pisses me off doubly because I made a good amount of money in the market several years ago, and all the capital gains were taxable as income...bastards
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See, you didn't make the list. Not by a long shot. Stop complaining and learn to drive.
12/08/09
Those are very surprising results. Here is my guess why they are in there;
Portland is very much a "narrow streets" setup, especially in the downtown area.
The 3 ways to get in/out at long distance to the East is Powell (very bottom red line) Hawthorne (around low mid) and up Sandy area. Other than that it's like going through with a machete.
And Seattle... Well, there's a whole 2 bridge that connect the East-West sound with a huge number of people working downtown, and living on the East side.
Even then it can get really hectic to get around Seattle. At least Portland has some kind of logic to it.
As for SF, been there... And it wasn't that bad actually on Sunday, though it was amazing to see 3 then 7 lanes of traffic gridlocked. That is a lot of cars.
12/08/09
I am amazed that Portland made this list at all. I spent 2 weeks in Portland, They have very little to complain about.
And KC drivers do need to learn how to drive.
If New Jersey had an actual city to cling to, it would have made the list in some way, but they said cities not, entire damn states.
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Thank you, very good point.
The worst example is Sellwood - Tacoma - 99E.
Imagine this guys. 2 lane bridge, into a 4 lane section, which compresses into 2 lanes, then expands into 4. However, in the 2nd expansion, if there is a left turning car, the inside lane is screwed. If you go through, this compresses down to 2 lanes again.
All in a distance of 10 blocks. -_-
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Also, in real life you would never spend a quarter of the time in traffic in Portland, for example, as you would anywhere in BosNYWash.
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For example... the nightclub district downtown on a Friday or Saturday night... don't bother trying to get a spot that's close to the club/bar you want to go to... just park on a lot near Front St. and walk the rest of the way... you'll spend less on parking and you'll arrive sooner.
My personal favourite spot is a place on Blue Jays Way just north of Front on the East side. It's underground, safe, warm and cheap (usually only $5 or $6)
Also, when going east, avoiding the Spadina offramp is another good strategy if it's really backed up. Instead, take the next exit and then go back west on Lakeshore and then take the side roads around the skydome... but do that only when there's no Jays game or event going on.
Or when getting on the Gardner West... it often makes more sense to stay on lakeshore and get on the Gardner Expressway near the Humber Loop rather than trying to get on by Dunn Ave.
Or when trying to get downtown and the entire QEW/Gardner and Lakeshore is backed up, an alternative is:
-take South Service Road from Hurontario.
-That will eventually merge back onto the highway... but then you just get right back off and take Evans to Kipling.
-go North on Kipling to Queensway and go east on Queensway
-Take Queensway to King. While doing this, have a look at your right to see if things are getting better or worse on the Gardner. When turning right on King, decide whether to get back on the Gardner via Lakeshore or go through Exhibition place to Front Street.
-Take Front in... if it gets backed up, turn left at Bathurst and then take the first right after going over the bridge. That will take you to around the Skydome and parking that's within walking distance of the clubs.
While the traffic can be bad, if you familiarize yourself with all the roads, there's usually a way to bypass the worst jams.
12/08/09
Last time I was in the area, was for a seminar in Mississauga last spring. Needless to say, there was no sensible way to avoid QEW rush hour traffic both ways (on a Friday, no less). It was easier getting into town than out, since I crossed the Peace Bridge at something like 6am (and hour into my drive), so it was smooth sailing until I was fairly close to where I needed to be. It took an hour longer to get home than it did to get there. Ick.
...but again, as the hapless out-of-towner, I get screwed. Such is life.
12/08/09
"Every single college town of 20k people after a major sporting event, as 300k people try to find their cars and leave on two-lane roads"
Yes, I'm in the SEC. Why do you ask?
12/08/09
My town qualifies on size, but we're the Chicago Cubs of the Big 10 so our home games only draw 50K (at most) masochists, binge-drinkers and thirty/forty-somethings hoping to pull an undergrad.
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Besides, being in the SEC, don't Tim Tebow's almighty powers extend to parting the sea of red taillights?
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80k people at the game, another 100k-200k just in town to tailgate and generally take up space.
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Around here, we're all involuntarily consumed within the Nick Saban Ego Forcefield.
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