hobie16 wrote:Weren't the streets in Boston laid out where the cow trails ran? Maybe just an urban rumor.
I dunno, but some of them sure looked like it! There are also streets where you'd swear a car couldn't fit between the two rows of buildings, some of which allow one-way traffic. Slower-than-walking-speed one way traffic, since even if the car was the only one on the road they'd have to maneuver around stoops and things, but the slow part was true a lot of places anyhow.
hobie16 wrote:
The best way to survive in Boston is to drive like a local. Run with the herd I say!
I just flat don't have the nerve.

Or possibly the reflexes -- I saw more almost-accidents there in a day than the cumulative from driving through Chicago ten or twenty times.

At one point we were walking by a construction area, where a road dropped from four lanes to one in a few blocks, and apparently no one ever "lets" anyone in -- if you're in the lane that disappears, you have to force your way in. And if you're in the lane that doesn't disappear, you do your level best to hold your ground. Which in practice apparently means people just pretend it isn't happening. The road may have two lanes painted on it, but there were three lanes of barely moving traffic, while the drivers were all arguing about which rows are the
real ones. "You guys need to merge in." "No,
you guys need to merge in."
I've been in construction areas in Chicago a zillion times, never saw anything like that. People arguing and screaming at each other, sure. People cutting each other off, people not letting someone in, confused tourists going the wrong way, all that. But the three lanes where there should be two, that I'd never seen before, probably because a fair percentage of people in Chicago do prefer to have more that six inches between their car and other cars in pretty much every direction. Boston drivers try to keep it under six inches at least in the front and back, for fear someone might slide in there. And Chicago has a lot of midwesterners, so some natives will eventually let you in -- only time I ever saw someone let another driver in their lane in Boston, the polite driver had out of state plates. :p: It was the
universality of the rude driving in Boston that amazed me.
But I was in Boston before they finished the Big Dig -- who knows, things might have improved.