ITT: You're hopelessly lost

Princess Alice · 2012-11-08 08:54:34

Yarrun XIX · 2012-11-08 11:26:12

I am temporarily a truck.

Tomorrow, I'll be a Mercedes convertible.

RocketRunner · 2012-11-08 12:11:45

You can go Southwest, or North North.

Princess Alice · 2012-11-08 12:27:43

^^ The best part is that "temporary" is a blatant lie. It's meant to route trucks around an overpass of substandard height, but neither the city nor the railroad company has any plans of ever replacing the underpass.

Ace Rimmer · 2012-11-08 15:54:27

Christ on a bike

I'm so glad I dont drive IN AMERICA!

Justice4243 · 2012-11-08 16:18:23

WHERE IS YOUR GOD, NOW?!

lee4hmz · 2012-11-08 16:26:19

Rimmer: Oh, it can get bad here. The signs around DC in particular are renowned for being quite inscrutable, or at least they were before all the huge improvement projects started.

Ace Rimmer · 2012-11-08 16:28:07

Justice42 said:
WHERE IS YOUR GOD, NOW?!

Thats actually surprising clear

Oh, it can get bad here. The signs around DC in particular are renowned
for being quite inscrutable, or at least they were before all the huge
improvement projects started.

Oh bugger :/

Justice4243 · 2012-11-08 17:15:48

This is a better example of Portland road dickery:

https://maps.google.com/?ll=45.525364,-122.661965&spn=0.000593,0.000871&t=h&z=21&layer=c&cbll=45.525364,-122.661965&panoid=4WSYV_1pafLu2UzpSyY2WA&cbp=12,271.33,,0,19.26

Each lane takes you to a completely different area. And heaven help you if you haven't figured out which one you needed to be in before this point, because there's a good change traffic is not good enough that you can quickly get over.

I should also mention that at this point you're going at least 50 mph, so you have pretty much no time to correct being in the wrong lane.

splash · 2012-11-08 17:56:11

I actually have DPD so I really am hopelessly lost a lot of the time.

@Justice42
Portland looks scary as hell to drive in. How did you ever get the hang of it?

Salix Babylonika · 2012-11-08 17:58:45

>light torch
>go west

Justice4243 · 2012-11-08 17:59:32

I have a GPS in my car, and on my phone.

I'm pretty sure I'd be dead in a ditch in like...Aloha, Oregon or some other bizarre suburb of the Portland Metropolitan area if this was not the case.

Salix Babylonika · 2012-11-08 18:06:20

There's a suburb fairly close to here locally known as Horse-Head (for reasons that are both less and more grisly than that name would lead you to believe) that is set up in what I can only describe as a racetrack-like fashion.

It's an oval, there are houses on the outside of the oval in a ring, and a few facing outwards in an "island" in the middle that share a small space as backyards.

It's the strangest thing, and there's only one road that leads into/out of the development.

Princess Alice · 2012-11-11 07:21:06

This one isn't like this anymore, but it was actually such a problem that they ended up rebuilding it less than 10 years after it opened:

Five lanes, every single one going somewhere different.

The big problem, congestion-wise, was that the left three lanes, which up to this point were for I-670 through traffic, are suddenly exit lanes, forcing everyone who wants to stay on 670 to try and merge into the second lane from the right.

To add insult to injury, they couldn't keep their bloody exit numbers straight:

Justice4243 · 2012-11-11 13:52:56

Here's going real old school in Portland:

Well, that looks completely terrifying, let's see how they've fixed it 70 years later:

And they've added a streetcar that goes through this area....

Note to self, stay the FUCK off of North Broadway.

Princess Alice · 2012-11-11 14:02:27

The present day one looks mildly better, but only insofar as they've realized that one three-leg intersection and one four-leg intersection close together are marginally safer than one giant five-leg intersection.

Also, you reminded me: Columbus, Ohio has a street whose proper name is "North Broadway". It's an east-west street and fits perfectly into our grid as such, so addresses on it fall on "East North Broadway" and "West North Broadway".

Most people who actually live here have long ago accepted it as Yet Another Little Quirk, but it's fun to watch people from out of town trip over it. Especially since the signs from the main freeway just say "N. Broadway".

Princess Alice · 2012-11-18 08:40:38

Good luck!

Anonus · 2012-11-18 08:46:46

Central Avenue said:
The present day one looks mildly better, but only insofar as they've realized that one three-leg intersection and one four-leg intersection close together are marginally safer than one giant five-leg intersection.

Also, you reminded me: Columbus, Ohio has a street whose proper name is "North Broadway". It's an east-west street and fits perfectly into our grid as such, so addresses on it fall on "East North Broadway" and "West North Broadway".

Most people who actually live here have long ago accepted it as Yet Another Little Quirk, but it's fun to watch people from out of town trip over it. Especially since the signs from the main freeway just say "N. Broadway".

You think that's fun, I'd find it frustrating...

Princess Alice · 2012-11-18 08:48:18

You mean you don't enjoy a good street-grid-based shibboleth?

Anonus · 2012-11-18 08:49:15

No I don't

Princess Alice · 2012-11-18 08:53:11

Aww...well then I'll be sure to keep you up to date on all of my city's little street name quirks before you visit!

Among other things:

Hamilton Avenue and Hamilton Road are two different things
Numbered Avenues go east-west and numbered Streets go north-south, exactly the opposite of NYC
When people say "Polaris Parkway" they usually mean Powell Road and when they say "Powell Road" they usually mean Polaris Parkway

Anonus · 2012-11-18 09:04:29

Do you even have a South Broadway

Princess Alice · 2012-11-18 09:12:44

No. Thank god.

Anonus · 2012-11-18 09:17:49

Why "Thank god."?

Princess Alice · 2012-11-18 09:18:58

Well, you know...having "West North Broadway", "East North Broadway", "West South Broadway", and "East South Broadway" as four separate things would become a pain very quickly.

Anonus · 2012-11-18 09:21:08

Oh, right.

Misery · 2012-11-19 08:00:05

YAY

sunn wolf · 2012-11-19 19:25:02

wow british road signage is way clearer than... whatever the hell this thread is. i mean we have town names and things not an incomprehensible string of numbers and arrows

Central Avenue said:
Well, you know...having "West North Broadway", "East North Broadway", "West South Broadway", and "East South Broadway" as four separate things would become a pain very quickly.

that said, near me you may find an Eastern Avenue East, Eastern Avenue West, Western Avenue East and Western Avenue West

Princess Alice · 2012-11-19 21:48:55

sunn wolf said:
wow british road signage is way clearer than... whatever the hell this thread is. i mean we have town names and things not an incomprehensible string of numbers and arrowa

From what I understand, that's one of the biggest differences between signs in North America and signs in the UK (and presumably elsewhere, though I've only discussed it with British people): ours tend to emphasize route numbers above all else, while yours tend to place more emphasis on towns and other destinations.

I kinda understand why that is, I think. America's big, and if you're going on a longer trip--say, from Cincinnati to Atlanta--it's easier to think of it as "go south on I-75 to Atlanta" than "go towards Lexington, then go towards Knoxville, then go towards Chattanooga," etc.

Princess Alice · 2012-11-22 00:41:10

I have no idea what they were thinking here:

Seriously, three of the "truck" assemblies could be omitted entirely because they're redundant with the mainlines!

Corporal Forsythe · 2012-11-22 00:42:39

Central Avenue said:
I have no idea what they were thinking here:

Seriously, three of the "truck" assemblies could be omitted entirely because they're redundant with the mainlines!

As a truck driver, I can attest that we appreciate that redundancy. There's nothing worse than going down a tiny street that you can't fit down and then have to back out.

Princess Alice · 2012-11-22 00:45:24

No, no, I understand that.

But in this case, Truck 80, Truck 14, and Truck 22 East are all pointing exactly the same direction as their non-truck counterparts. Why include separate truck signs if there aren't actually separate truck routes?

Corporal Forsythe · 2012-11-22 00:49:58

I think I can explain that too. If you pick up a Rand McNally atlas meant for professional drivers, you'll see orange-lined highways on the map. That means they're acceptable (so to speak) routes for a truck to go down. It's not a legal indication by any means, but highways and roads that aren't outlined in orange are typically considered to be a bad idea to travel down in a truck. Considering that's Alabama there, I'm guessing that's the hill country where these roads can get troublesome and that's why there's all those truck indicators on the signs.

Also one time I blew the map off and went down a non-orange highway in northern california. Shaved a lot of time off my trip but I got in trouble with my driver manager for it.

Princess Alice · 2012-11-22 00:54:54

Ah, that does make sense. Instead of saying "if you're driving a truck, go a different way" they're trying to say "if you're driving a truck, this road's okay for you too!"

ITT: You're hopelessly lost

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