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On a related note for anyone who has walked around both Manhattan and downtown Chicago... Ever notice how downtown Chicago has much less noise of honking cars
by jasode 8y ago
On a related note for anyone who has walked around both Manhattan and downtown Chicago...
Ever notice how downtown Chicago has much less noise of honking cars than downtown New York City? A friend pointed out it's because of Chicago's lower-level streets[0] that a lot of service vehicles use for loading/unloading. That's in contrast to Manhattan where everybody has to share the same street level. E.g. a brown UPS truck that stops for a mere 20 seconds is enough for the yellow cab driver that's stuck behind him to smash on the horn with impatience.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilevel_streets_in_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilevel_streets_in_Chicago
- brootstrap 8y agolower wacker is a life saver yall . Know it and love it!
- larrywright 8y agoFun story: once, while using Apple Maps to navigate to a hotel in Chicago, it got confused and directed me on to Lower Wacker. It kept giving me directions as if I was on Upper Wacker. “Turn right here”, it said, as if there wasn’t a brick wall there. GPS is great in two dimensions, less great in three dimensions.
- ja1215 8y agoAs far as I can tell, all GPS devices get whacky on Lower Wacker.
- joezydeco 8y agoWaze and SpotHero pitched in to install BTLE beacons down there and help the novice Uber drivers find their way back to street level. https://chicago.curbed.com/2018/9/7/17786634/waze-beacons-wacker-drive-chicago-signal https://chicago.curbed.com/2018/9/7/17786634/waze-beacons-wa...
- wenc 8y agoI understand it currently only works with Waze. Despite Google owning Waze, I'm not sure if it has been integrated into Google Maps. Here's a story about the challenges of installing beacons in Chicago [1] vs tunnels near Logan Airport in Boston. My Google Maps still goes a little crazy on Lower Wacker. Also we need beacons in the loop. All those tall buildings really mess up navigation downtown. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/chicago-waze-beacons-spothero-gps/ https://www.wired.com/story/chicago-waze-beacons-spothero-gp...
- paulie_a 8y agoI don't know what Uber did to make their implementation of GPS so terrible. Google maps can definitely have issues at times in Chicago but I rarely see an Uber driver use the built-in mapping. They use Google maps. Side note on Uber express, if it says northeast corner, it will always be the southwest corner.
- wenc 8y agoLyft doesn't even have their own maps. Drivers get to pick between Waze or Google Maps [1]. Google Maps is so much better than anything else. [1] https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012926407-How-to-change-navigation-settings https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012926407-How-to-...
- hermitdev 8y agoIt doesn't work with Google Maps. Source: I was using Google maps to get to/from Northwestern Hospital on Lower Wagner today, and the GPS dropped the entire time I was down there.
- moron4hire 8y agoThat's literally true. The GPS system sacrifices precision in Altitude for precision in Latitude/Longitude.
- justinator 8y agoHow? I was just under the impression that figuring out a correct elevation via gps is a hard problem. Airplanes use barometric pressure for altitude.
- wbl 8y agoIt isn't hard, it's just that with a bit of road in between you and the sky the signal is lost. Airplane use barometric pressure for altitude is in part backwards compatibility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_level
- the_clarence 8y agoGo to Europe and enjoy your stroll through the public streets of cities that were designed for walking. A pleasure :)
- spongeb00b 8y agoI wouldn’t want to even say “designed” as much as grown organically around us over a few hundred years.
- the_clarence 8y agoNew streets and building are still designed for this purpose. Compare that to large american streets that take forever to cross.
- mcgarnagle 8y agonot to be a stickler but I think that the word would be designed. Otherwise you can apply that statement to anything, it's like saying smartphones weren't designed so much as grown organically. Just because requirements, and technology progress doesn't make it any less design for that time.
- solarkraft 8y agoA human thinks about the smartphone as a whole, drafts it up and builds it [slightly simplifiedly]. Old cities started as settlements, which more and more people moved to. Those people considered things like walking distance. Maybe they "designed" the places to put their homes, but the thing as a whole was in many cases not planned-through. And even with the cities that were, pedestrian comfort was the main (or one of the main) concern(s).
- plussed_reader 8y agoNothing organic about rebuilding the cities after WWII. Very much designed.
- 8y ago
- weberc2 8y agoChicago also has alleys all over, so there's not garbage piled up on the sidewalks and garbage trucks are less of a nuissance for traffic.
- wglb 8y agoThis is a serious flaw with New York City.
- Donzo 8y agoFortunately, Chicago burned to the ground, which gave them an opportunity to replan. They adopted the Daniel Burnam plan, which reclaimed the lakefront from industrial shipping and attempted to put a park within one mile of every home. The city is much better off for it, which just goes to show you that even destruction presents the opportunity of rebirth.
- jmh530 8y agoIt's 10:57pm and NYC is just honking away...
- gecko 8y agoThis was supposed to be a key aspect of the original idea for EPCOT, too: streets would be tri-level, cars on the lowest level, delivery trucks on the next level, and above-ground restricted to pedestrians. You can see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept) for more information.
- paulie_a 8y agoI can't compare NYC vs Chicago. But Chicago has plenty of honking. To the extent that I think Chicago should fine people for it. If you lay on the horn for more than ten seconds you should get a 1000 dollar fine and lose your license. That is how excessive and obnoxious it is. Typically taxi drivers are the worst with that behavior. I can understand giving a tap when someone isn't paying attention to a green light. But laying on the horn when no one is moving because traffic is backed up for three stop lights, fuck those people.
- wenc 8y agoChicago taxi drivers are some of the most obnoxious drivers on the road. However, I can sort of understand why. (not to excuse them or anything) The Chicago downtown driving experience, while not terrible like NYC, can be annoying because there are so many bad drivers about (Illinois licensing is very lax). There are drivers parked on bike lanes, drivers suddenly stopping and double parking, drivers not signalling or leaving their turn signals on without any intention of changing lanes. Couple that with out-of-town drivers from Wisconsin and Indiana who are unfamiliar with traffic patterns, anyone who spends a lot of time driving downtown is liable to build up a lot of resentment.
- tacomonstrous 8y ago>Illinois licensing is very lax In my first (and only) driving test in Chicago, the very first thing I did was roll the stop sign at the exit for the testing facility. Got a mild reprimand from the examiner, but passed the test.
- paulie_a 8y agoIt was shockingly easy to get drivers license in Il. Granted I didn't need to take a road test, the written test was so simplistic a 12 year old could probably pass it. If I had to do a road test I would have failed hard because of the number of fbombs I dropped at other drivers. Or I might have passed because of it. Hard to tell.
- paulie_a 8y ago
- xivzgrev 8y agoYes but only certain areas of downtown, mostly in the NE (where there are TWO underground levels) and along Wacker to Congress.
- marzell 8y agoI just returned from my first trip to Chicago, and noticed some related things when comparing to other large cities I'm familiar with. Related to honking and street noise, another factor I noticed is a high number of curbs where parking is simply not allowed. This streamlines traffic in some ways, as people aren't fighting over spaces or waiting for someone to back in slowly. Although, there was a lot of "hazard parking" where people just stopped where they weren't supposed to. A lot of the honking I witnessed was due to freight/waste vehicles blocking an entire street (2-4 lanes) so they could back into a dock or service area in the middle of a block. Downtown at night seemed eerily quiet, although there were a good number of people. I think several factors applied here, when compared with SF... Chicago has been built to handle the vast crowds from events and conventions that swarm the city. When that isn't happening, there is comparatively more room for people, so it's wide sidewalks aren't as crowded. Also, being built to withstand harsh winters, I imagine there is better thermal insulation that also acts as decent audio insulation (plus a lot is happening under the street level!). I was right outside blues and jazz clubs where you couldn't actually hear that anything was going on inside (this makes me laugh when compared to visiting Nashville for the first time earlier in the year). It also seemed that the contention between drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians is more severe even than SF, where I saw several interactions that seemed more like a macho game of "chicken".
- bluedino 8y agoEerily quiet at night? What neighborhood did you stay in? Hotels often put earplugs on the nightstand since it’s so loud in some parts.
- rhino369 8y agoHe probably means the loop. Which in many parts is totally abandoned at night.
- zubairshams 8y agoAll the traffic is in River North, the area straight north bordering downtown. River North is where most of the nightlife is.
- 8y ago
- wglb 8y agoIt used to be more so when the subterranean tunnels were in operation. I think, however, that outside of Lower Wacker, there is not much below-ground delivery taking place.
- aasasd 8y agoThere's also a different solution that e.g. Russia employs: honking is completely prohibited except for avoiding a collision. Of course, people still honk occasionally when annoyed, and, notably, to call someone outside the traffic; and the rule isn't enforced much—but its mere existence raises the threshold considerably. You have to really be in the way to earn a honk, twenty seconds is an unthinkably low cutoff here indicating anger problems on the honking driver's part.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThat sounds terrible. If someone screws up on the road they should be told, loudly.
- chki 8y agoIf you honk: do you know how many people you are annoying with that? I would guess you can probably hear a honking car in a radius of at least 300 m outdoors and 100m indoors. So in any well populated area there are probably there are probably more than 500 people who hear a car honking. Do you really thing that's worth it, just to tell a single person they did something wrong?
- amanaplanacanal 8y agoI'm guessing that was intended to be a joke, but I'm not 100% sure.
- hammock 8y agoHonking is also illegal in NYC if I recall correctly.. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/opinion/the-350-honk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/opinion/the-350-honk.html
- aasasd 8y agoWell, then I guess that unlike New Yorkers, Russians actually listen to the law.