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It's official: We're better drivers than New Jerseyites
By adamg on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 8:40am
We went down to New York this weekend for a bat mitzvah and family get-together. As we were driving back from the bat mitzvah in New Jersey, we stopped for this red light just before the Holland Tunnel. The light turned green, but I didn't take my foot off the brake because there was nowhere to go on the other side of the intersection - traffic there was at a complete stop, which I suppose makes sense when you're funneling a gazillion lanes of traffic into just two.
The guy behind me, though, started giving me some New Jersey horn. Then he swerved into an emergency lane on the right, zoomed through the intersection - and promptly got stuck in the gridlock on the other side. A cop who had just been standing in the middle of the mess sauntered over, ordered him to the side of the road and began yelling at him. The traffic cleared up enough for us to get through the intersection, and as we crept past, the cop motioned at us and yelled "he did the right thing, why couldn't you?!?"
Odd downtown-Manhattan thing: We stayed in a hotel half a block from Wall Street. On-street parking on a weekend wasn't bad, so I did that instead of paying an extra $30 a night for a garage. On Saturday night, there were three other cars with Mass. plates on the same small block; with another one just around the corner. When did we launch the invasion?
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Comments
Don't Block the Box
I lived in Manhattan for 4 years during college and loved how strict they are with not blocking the box. I hate that greater Boston area does practically nothing to prevent blocking the box.
Coolidge Corner in Brookline is awful because everyone does the best they can in order to block the box.
Another thing that NYC does great is synchronized traffic lights. Where the lights are synchronized you go for 20 blocks without hitting a red light. You can't find that ANYWHERE in the Boston area.
Re: synchronized signals
Oh, some of our traffic lights are synchronized... they're just backwards by design! I love seeing those "Signals timed to require frequent stops" signs on DCR roadways like the one seen here: http://goo.gl/maps/Mikl
there'd be no way to
there'd be no way to synchronize our tangled web of streets here... definitely not laid out as in nyc. we do actually have some synchronization in the bb
It wouldn't be that hard to
It wouldn't be that hard to synchronize lights in downtown Boston. Just pick the busier street in each intersection, and have its light turn green a few seconds after its previous light does.
It's unbelievable how bad the BTD is at this stuff. Just look at roads like the Surface Artery, where each light turns red just before you get there, unless you jam on the gas and run the next light at 50 mph as it turns yellow.
Synchronized signals....Oh, tell me about it.
Somerville's Union Square, and the intersection of Linwood Street, at the end, at the overpass, both have the same problem. If you're driving through Union Square or the the intersection of Linwood street and the overpass, where one makes a U-turn to get onto Medford street during rush hours, uggh...forget it! The gridlock is often horrible, and one can sit through at least three or four lights before finally making it through! It's insane sometimes.
Friday, I had to do an errand, and buy something for Aziza, and the traffic was even more insane than the normal Friday afternoon rush-hour, both the incoming and outgoing city traffic! Crazy!
I would really like all
major city intersections to be painted with the crosshatches and have the "Don't Block the Box" signs that NYC has. I am so annoyed by the many drivers around town who are only too happy to pull into an intersection even when there is nowhere to go, so they can gridlock traffic in all directions. It's especially bad around the Medical area, Brookline Village, Longwood Ave. and Comm Ave.
Roadman, chime in anytime...
As I'm sure our resident transportation engineer will tell you, it's considerably more difficult to synchronize traffic lights for a street pattern like ours than it is for a grid plan like NYC, LA or lots of other places that have functioning synchornized traffic lights.
That said, there are some areas around here where it could be done relatively easily, but those locations are limited. Better enforcement of the laws concerning not blocking intersections would probably be at least as effective and substantially cheaper.
With respect to the the NY area versus eastern New England drivers debate, I would add that I notice the difference on the highway a lot more than anywhere else. Lots of folks from the NY metro area tend to drive slower than we do, and I believe that is because they spend so much time driving slower than we do because the traffic there is so much worse (disclosure: I grew up in the suburbs of NYC). Doing 70 feels much faster when you spend most of your life at 15-30. NY area drivers also have less respect for the left lane as passing lane than folks around here.
"Less" respect for the left lane as a passing lane?
Please. Massholes just love to park it in the left lane on the Pike, especially once you've cleared 128 Westbound. Don't even get me started on the absolute inability to enter a highway, exit a road or merge. NYC and NJ do the last part better than anybody, most because our lives were spent dropping from 10 lanes to 2. Lincoln, Holland, GWB, Triboro -- all great places to learn the one-for-one strategy.
As for speed, I'll beg you to try that theory on Sixth or Eighth Avenues sometime, bub. They make Boylston and Storrow "speeders" look like horses trapped in the Great Molasses Flood.
Pax vehiculus
Hey now let's simmer down...no need to be beating up on each other when we know who the real problem is.... CONNECTICUT DRIVIZ!! I have never been able to get through that accursed state of nutmeg without passing at least two accidents resulting in dozens of miles of rubber-necking back-up. Fucking left-side on and off-ramps??? Who's the genius that comes up with this crap??
NY and NJ have plenty of
NY and NJ have plenty of those too -- it's the older roads.
Connecticut = awful
The Merritt Parkway is riddled with the ramps you describe. The fact that even the natives don't understand how to navigate them doesn't inspire confidence.
A seasoned pro, however, can take a left-side on or off ramp with ease. The right-side on ramps 50 feet from the next right side off ramps on Mass highways, however, give them a run for the money.
parkway ramps
I don't think the Merritt or Wilbur Cross has a single left-side exit or entrance ramp. It has a very narrow median, so there's no room on the left.
Are you thinking of I-84 or I-91?
Yes, "less".
You will acknowledge, of course, that the term "less" accounted for the fact that there are folks around here who do this as well.
My comments on speed were related to highways (which I consider to be different not only from city streets, but also from "expressways"). You are absolutely correct that people in NY drive like absolute imbeciles on both city streets and the urban expressways (which includes, for purposes of my comments, the "suburban expressways" such as the most of the LIE and I-80 for the 30 miles west of the GWB). I was nearly killed by one aforesaid imbecile four months ago as he executed an entirely unsignalled three-lane sweep on the the LIE near the Nassau/Queens line and missed my front bumper by about one foot (at about 65 mph).
A good example of the slower driving that I was talking about can be found on the NYS Thruway north of the Tappan Zee. If you're doing 74 there, you're passing almost everyone.
Btw, if you are complaining about being behind "parked" drivers in the left lane on the Masspike and you are "parking" at or above 76, I entreat you to say hello to my friends in Troop E when you inevitably meet them - which will be sooner rather than later and particularly so if you have one of those incredibly ugly new (old) orange and blue or piss yellow tags.
Hey, don't badmouth the three-lane sweep
That's our signature move. It's even better when it's a five-lane cross at a nearly 45-degree angle on the Garden State Parkway. Try dealing with that 12 weekends a year in shore traffic. It makes the expressway south look like a dream.
As for the Pike, nobody in the left lane knows what 76 looks like. They just want to see if the kids are diving off the train trestle this summer. Common pike knowledge seems to dictate that the old green-lettered plates not only entitle you to the left lane, but to go a breezy 42 in that lane.
Troop E -- I laugh. I'm from Jersey pal. Our troopers are the reason "racial profiling" is in the lexicon. Your teddy bear "staties" are no match for our knuckle-dragging, multiple test-failing, formerly coke-and-adderall-addled, lowest-common-denominator Clockwork Orange stormtroopers.
Another lesson
In terms of lessons learned, how about Jersey cops may know and care more about traffic laws and public safety than our no-blood-no-ticket ones?
If it was at the tunnel, it
If it was at the tunnel, it would have been a Port Authority cop. They LOVE handing out moving violations, even off PA property.
Wild West
True enough about the PA cops. Then again, Adam wrote that he was headed back from Jersey before the Holland Tunnel. It could well have been either a Jersey employee of the Authority or a state cop.
Alas, I didn't look
I was too busy enjoying the karmic (or should that be car-mic?) justice.
Street parking
On our trips to NYC, it's typically easier to street-park there, at least below 14th Street, than it is in Boston. You do have to watch the signs, though, to make sure you avoid street-cleaning days, but if you park on Friday afternoon you can usually leave the car until Monday or Tuesday, depending on the street/neighborhood.
And if you're used to driving in downtown Boston ...
You'll have no problems whatsoever with all the narrow, crooked streets that go one way or another seemingly at random. A lot more pedestrians and bicyclists to worry about, though.
As someone who grew up in NJ
As someone who grew up in NJ but has lived here for the past 10 years, don't blame all of NJ for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. The closer drivers get to NYC the more they turn into monsters on the asphalt.
Having had large samplings of both NJ and MA drivers, they are both bad, but in different ways. MA drivers go WAY faster and are more entitled (and seemingly much less likely to use turn signals). NJ drivers seem too fond of changing lanes for no apparent reason and tailgating.
NJ, too
Grew up and got my license in NJ.
When I go back to NJ I find myself driving nuttier (and 10 MPH faster) than here in MA.
But when I got my license in NJ there was no "road test" - I tested on a closed course at Baker's Basin. Then 2 days later I was on 8th Ave in NYC thinking "why am I qualified to do this?"
NJ vs MA
I grew up and learned to drive in NJ. They are definitely quite impatient there. However, MA drivers have a special knack for running red lights and blocking the box, often at the same time.
Not blocking the box is
Not blocking the box is enforced in California as well.
I had a similar incident on Memorial Dr. People heading east were blocking the box after a red light. I was heading west and taking a left across them (with the light.)
One jerk was giving me the finger and NOT giving me any room to turn in front of him.
Doing this even though he could only go two feet further thru a red light and ensure he blocked my legal turn completely.
Guy jsut didn't get it.
How does that make MA drivers better?
Just because the cop knew that blocking the intersection is illegal? (Where here, I've had them yell at me to pull up into the intersection.)
It's pretty common around here too to have people fly around you using a lane illegally or changing illegally. Maybe 50% of the time that I stop so as to not block the box, someone flies around me and pulls in front of me into the intersection. People also will fly around on either side if someone isn't making a left turn fast enough for their liking.