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New York City clearly uses a similar system if you've spent any time in Manhattan at all. North of 14th Street the city is almost entirely on a grid (Broadway
by cletus 14y ago
New York City clearly uses a similar system if you've spent any time in Manhattan at all.
North of 14th Street the city is almost entirely on a grid (Broadway runs diagonal and there are a couple of other exceptions). This has, at least from my observations, had three distinct advantages:
1. Building subways has been relatively easy (a lot were built by digging long straight tunnels and building the avenue over them);
2. Almost all streets are one-way, which greatly simplifies lights. A lot of cities have gone away from one-way streets because it "confuses" drivers despite it being clearly better; and
3. The lights are synchronized.
Now not all city's have NYC's regularity but the Manhattan grid has to go down as one of the greatest forethoughts in urban planning ever (IMHO).
Anyway, it's interesting to see this work so well in cities that are less regular.
- DannoHung 14y agoAnd yet getting across town is still a pain and a half.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoI was about to respond with a knee-jerk "Try it in Dallas around 5:30pm, or in Austin any time between 3pm and 6pm", but I guess it's all subjective. I'd rather spend 45 minutes standing up in the subway, free to zone out or read a book, rather than 30 minutes stuck in stop-and-go traffic. (And definitely rather than 2 hours stuck in the same traffic.)
- rdouble 14y agoI think he meant getting "crosstown" meaning going east to west or vice versa. This requires taking one of 3 subways, a bus, taxi or walking. It is a pain compared to the myriad of ways to get north and south.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoOh, right. Yeah - I live on the west-most side of Harlem, and I'm basically resigning myself to never seeing any of my friends on the Upper East Side.
- iamdave 14y agoor in Austin any time between 3pm and 6pm I think you mean "or in Austin any time between midnight and 11:59pm the next day. Used to live in a condo with a direct line of sight to 35, it would be no shocker to wake up at 2am, walk to the bathroom and glance out my sliding glass door randomly to see 35 backed up.
- tkahn6 14y agoWhen I lived in NYC over the summer, one of the things that blew my mind was how easy and cheap and quick it was to get anywhere in the city. YYMV though, I guess.
- DannoHung 14y agoIt's not that it's hard, it's just that a cab ride from 1st Ave and 34th to 10th Ave and 34th is gonna take like 15 minutes at least. Which is ridiculous because it's about a mile.
- cynicalkane 14y agoDriving in Manhattan is great... when there's no traffic and you don't need to park. New York can fix those problems easily, but they have some sort of Stockholm syndrome with their unbelievably terrible traffic situation. But when it's not rush hour, you can cruise twenty blocks at a time through Midtown before you hit a short red light. That's pretty nice. Everything's on a grid, one-way streets follow a pattern, and there's a lot of neat stuff to see as you drive.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoI never experienced much bad traffic in NYC, at least nothing compared to Beijing at 9PM.
- joonix 14y agoA walk from 2nd to 7th isn't that bad. Agree, though, could use another crosstown like the L somewhere else. I hate buses.
- jessriedel 14y agoThis is because the lights are synchronized to make north-south traffic fast, which is a smart trade-off made because of the island's shape.