By Robert Emslie
Let’s face it, even cities built around the automobile – like Los Angeles – are still a pain to get through by car. And when you consider the narrow thoroughfares, quaint cobblestone paving, and maze-like cartography of some of the world’s oldest and most densely populated urban landscapes, well, it makes investing in a good pair of shoes look like a good idea.
I’ve had the pleasure and challenge of driving in most of the biggest name cities in the US; San Francisco, Chicago, San Diego, Philadelphia, Washington DC, etc, as well as the aforementioned LA where going pretty much anywhere requires a check of the traffic to determine if it’s even possible. For most of these metro environs, getting past them is made easier by ring roads and highway bypasses, while getting anywhere downtown still requires steely nerves and a lot of time on your hands. Double that if you need to find parking.
As I noted, there are basically two types of metropolis – those whose major construction period post-dated the advent of the auto, and those whose was before. Each offers auto access but the pain point for drivers is elevated in the older cities, countered somewhat by all the timeless architecture you can view while stuck in traffic. Even most modern cities lack the infrastructure to support the volume of traffic presently thrown at them on a daily basis. Today, I want to know, in your experience, which city has been the most painful in which to drive.
Image source: Fifties50s
Jeff Glucker
Unless you have an Amphicar, the answer is Venice!
<img src="http://www.destination-venice.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/venice.jpg">
Oh, what fun!
<img src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01412/venice-car_1412682i.jpg"width="500"/>
Hahaha, you actually found a picture with an Amphicar in Venice… GREAT!!!
In and out of Chicago…during rush hour.
80mph-0mph-80mph in bumper to bumper traffic. What's not to like?
You forgot to mention the Dan Ryan sweepers. traffic is crawling at 25-30 mph….. one dude doing 90mph sweeping 5 lanes of traffic using the emergancy lane the exit ramps and the entrance to the skyway.
I've only experienced, personally, two of the worst — Atlanta and Los Angeles.
I'd give the nod to ATL as worst of the two, possibly because the speed limit when traffic is flowing seems to be "whatever you please", and partly because rush hour is pretty much all the time these days.
Ugh, thanks for reminding me that I've driven through ATL. If I ever go back, it'll be too soon.
I don't really find Atlanta that bad. I mean, the traffic sucks quite a bit, but it doesn't seem that crazy. 85 really winds through the city, though, and it feels like someone might sideswipe you at any second. I find driving in Toronto to be even worse, though.
ATL is a mixed bag. The freeways are a mess. Either gridlocked or a mad dervish of speeding, constantly merging madness. But the surface streets tend to be relatively easy to get around on compared to some other cities.
Budapest on a holiday.
Agreed! To Bratislava 4 hrs, 3 to get over bridge and going north, 1 to get to Bratislava!
Turin, Italy….but only when Charley Croaker's in town.
The worst traffic jam I have ever been in award: Atlanta
The longest I have ever been in a car going from point A to point B in the same town award: Dallas
Terrible traffic and drivers award: Austin
Houston has terrible traffic and drivers, not Austin.
Were you driving from Plano to Arlington? Dallas is just huge. It only takes a little bit of traffic to get that award. (Driving in Dallas is a particular joy of that city, IMO. It's one of the little pleasures of visiting my In-laws.)
I honestly don't remember. I am pretty sure we were driving from north to south. I fly into Dallas, and met my dad for my cousins graduation. He brought in 2 motorcycles that he was going to trade in at a Ducati dealer in Dallas. The locals said that we would have plenty of time to get to the dealer, and be back for the graduation. It was a Saturday, and we left early in the morning. We missed my cousins graduation and reception. It was a 12 hour adventure, I believe.
Wow. Dallas is something like 50 miles across (ignoring Ft Worth), so you should have been able to make it. That's some monumentally bad traffic or bad directions ;). (The Plano to Arlington is kind of NE to SW, I just picked them because they're on opposite sides of Dallas.)
Hmmm i would say Casablanca in Morroco!! Hell its a nightmare!! No rules is respected as anytime you get caught by cop 10$ in local money will be enought to be released with a big smile. By night no red light anymore, its all about luck! I've seen so many crashes that could have been avoided just by respecting simple rules but.. mediteranean blood it is!!!
Bogota, Colombia. It takes one and a half hours to drive 7 miles!
That's faster than my last experience of the German Autobahns. It was slightly slower than that approaching Hamburg – until I reached the point where the jam started on the bypass road.
Washington DC is horrible,with time variable no left turns, alternating one way streets every two blocks. Get lost or turned around and you are on a self guided tour. Ugh.
Close runner up is Pittsburgh, where they simply forgot to build roads. Note to PennDOT, a two lane strip of blacktop laid down on a cowpath with no shoulder, is NOT a major thouroughfare.
We don't have those problems in the good corner of the state 😀
Although, we do have Kelly Drive… which would make an excellent road course if we ever had a GP in Philly… it just happens to be a very narrow 4 lane road with lots of twisties.
I moved from Philly to Savannah, GA eight years ago. When I got to Savannah, I had to train myself not to laugh when people here complain about traffic and parking. They have no idea. I go back to Philly to visit friends and relatives periodically and it gets worse all the time. Vine St. and the Surekill can be jammed any time, any day of the week.
I think the problem comes down to population density. There are a shit ton of people living in and commuting to/from a ~130 sq mile city. It's going to get packed some times.
DC's not bad compared to some other metro areas, certainly not NYC or Boston. If one has a commute from outside the beltway into Foggy Bottom, then yeah, that's going to suck. It's really the pavement quality that had an issue with, but now I know better (that is, that its worse elsewhere)
All that development out in Gburg and Rockville is really what's clogging things up getting into downtown or even Bethesda for that matter (which is otherwise pretty clear)
I've driven in all of the U.S. cities generally regarded as among the worst (except New York – nobody drives there, there's too much traffic). My personal least favorite is D.C., not for the congestion, but for the confusing way the city is laid out. It's almost as if the city designers made it complicated on purpose, to confound invading armies.
Pierre L'Enfant designed it with avenues radiating from a center, in the same way that Paris is laid out (or at least was at that point in time).
L'Enfant terrible.
Paris. I will never forget my 1990 experience, coming from the sheltered and orderly ex-GDR to a city where people not only bumper-parked – they also used their horns and were five cars in three lanes. That blew my mind.
Bangalore, India. I haven't, however, driven in Russia and based on the videos on YouTube, that's probably worse.
I have driven in Moscow, Kiee and Odessa (OK last two are Ukraine) and the vast majority is fine and free flowing – except of rMoscow in rush hour.
But the videos hold a lot of truth. You can see bad wrecks on the sides of roads in the most unexpected places.
New Orleans:
1. Unsignalled, meandering lane changes take whole minutes, except when the car is being driven at the same slow speed basically perpendicular to traffic to get to the next exit.
2. Traffic speeds up while approaching blind crests over the tops of bridges, especially when the sun is in their eyes, even though traffic is always stopped or wrecked on the other side.
3. Terrifying, massive incidence of drunk driving. Some days it seemed like 1-in-3.
Chicago can fuck off, but Detroit get's honorable mention for potholery.
New Orleans, LA
You cannot possibly get through uptown to downtown without bottoming out on any/all of the potholes and missing pieces of road. Wheels last forever, but suspensions and alignments get changed more than the 10w30 in most cars. IF the heat or rain or flooded streets don't kill you, the all or nothing proposition of the other drivers certainly will.
I have driven for years in SF, Los Angeles and Houston. Yeah, traffic and distance all suck (SF parking is just insane) but New Orleans is by far the worst city to drive in, or around, or near.
I will fully concede that familiarity breeds contempt, and basically every other city I've driven in (Montreal, Vancouver, Washington, Boston) has been off peak hours, but I hate driving in Toronto. The only new freeway built in the area in the past 40 years is a privately-owned toll highway (because a bunch of NIMBYs stopped one particular freeway through their neighbourhood that subsequently set precendent to halt any other development planned), of the two ways into downtown, one's occasionally prone to flooding and the other's a crumbling political nightmare that the city's considering knocking down and just sticking with the six-lane road beneath it, frost heave makes the roads terrible (either because they're potholled, or a mess for the entire summer due to construction), lanes arbitrarily end for no reason, rendering huge chunks of pavement unusable to most of our citizens, we're sprawled out for like 50 miles, and drivers are largely untrained and apathetic. I mean, why would we be competent, when we have this man setting an example for us?
<img src="http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2012/08/14/li-ford-car.jpg" width=500 /img>
No Texas city has bad traffic, compared to LA, Chicago, Boston, DC, and NYC. I live in Houston and with few exceptions it's really not bad. Only the commuter highways at commute time are slow; surface streets are fine most of the time.
Beijing had a 6 DAY LONG traffic jam a year or two ago. I havent driven there, but I have been a passenger there. Ooof.
Worst I´ve been in was Santa Cruz de la Sierra Bolivia, loudness of horn matters over there.
The geniuses who founded Seattle decided to build a city on tide flat and landfill, with massive hills and lakes to the east, ocean to the west. Today, there is literally nowhere to expand I-5 through much of downtown, and half of it is on stilts. Highway 99 through Seattle, known as the Viaduct, is literally built on fill, and sinking 1/4 inch a year.
The sheer volume of traffic probably isn't as bad as other major cities, but the fact that it's concentrated in such a small area, with such aging and inadequate roads, makes it miserable. I avoid going there unless someone else is driving.
Heckuva job, fellas.
At least the floating bridges are fun.
<img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2146/1629054186_c8ff61248c.jpg" width="500">
Ever notice how the bridge acts as one big Gurney lip as the wind blows across it? One side of the bridge will be choppy and rough, while the other side for hundreds of feet will be calm and smooth.
It's a fetching effect.
As a lad, I was a paper boy. I remember the ongoing saga of a poor woman who mysteriously disappeared on a dark and stormy night in the late '70's/early '80s. It was an unusual story because neither her nor her car (a Plymouth Arrow, IIRC) were ever found. That is, until massive renovations to the 520 bridge a couple decades later. Sure enough, divers found car and body on the bottom of the lake under the bridge.
I can only imagine what's sitting on the bottom of that lake.
I know from personal experience that there is a wallet, keys to an Audi Fox and about half a case of cheap beer underneath the Seafair boom, and has been for almost 30 years.
Which part of the boom and where's the Audi parked?
I actually had to google "floating bridge". What an odd idea! Want to see Seattle once, the Volvo capital of America.
[youtube gm0YQ3vuyyY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0YQ3vuyyY youtube]
…or was that Portland? Whatever.
That's Seattle.
You, sir, have clearly never been on FDR Drive south in NYC, or good ol' Beantown traffic.
Seattle drivers have nothing to complain about, trust me. It's the 22nd century on the west coast when it comes to road infrastructure.
/4 years in Seattle
That Viaduct is terrifying. It reminds me of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway, which was terrible when it was standing and even worse when it collapsed.
Not to mention the fact that two land owners with separate visions for how downtown should be laid out started at separate ends and then had to match up roads right in the middle.
The middle has its own third grid, too:
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/Seattle_downtown_neighborhoods.jpg/300px-Seattle_downtown_neighborhoods.jpg">
Boren, Denny, and Maynard each apparently were rather stubborn.
Portland, OR.
Hear me out.
The metro area isn't all that large, however the locals seem to be horrible adverse to road building.
MASS TRANSIT IS GOOD FOR EVERYONE!
No…no it isn't.
Plus, there is an inexplicable need for 80% of the driving public there to IMMEDIATELY move to the left lane on any freeway after entering…at 45 MPH.
You're doing it wrong.
Also, oncoming left-turn folks…YOU HAVE THE LEAST AMOUNT OF RIGHT-OF-WAY at an intersection, unless, you either arrived first, or have a traffic signal giving you the first spot in right-of-way.
This last one seems to have invaded a few places since Y2K, but I saw it in Oregon, first.
Final nail in Portland's driving coffin? Not allowed to pump your own fuel.
Fail.
If there's a city that seems to have institutionalized hatred of cars, it's P-land.
And bless their hearts. That's where I bought my gas guzzling Mustang for $5k less than in Texas.
No state sales tax FTW!
Yep, but they don't let you pump your own fuel.
Not worth it to pay property taxes and deal with the general idiocy there.
Did so for four years, that was more than enough.
Thankfully, three years living in Lost Wages, NV, counteracted all of it.
Quite.
[youtube V3nMnr8ZirI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3nMnr8ZirI youtube]
The metro is friggin gigantic compared to Philly. I think the only problem here is that anywhere near the city you have no physical room for any more roads.
I agree that Portland is one of the worst cities I've driven in. So many times the signs for things like on ramps are after where you should turn and no advance notice that they are coming up. The people doing 45 in the left lane is also a pain and they continue to do it when they come to WA too. Since they can't see past the 100 "Save the Whales" , "Keep Portland Weird", "Share the road with Bicycles" and other stickers on the rear window of their Subaru or Prius they have zero idea that they are holding up traffic, not that they would likely care. Speaking of bicycles they are very dangerous in Portland since they refuse to observe the rules of the road, will cut right in front of you w/o looking and then flip you off after you almost run them over. People Jay walking right in front of you w/o looking and then flipping you off is about as bad as the bicyclists too.
Worst Design: Helsinki, Finland. Designed on purpose to be difficult to drive in, as a measure to reduce traffic(!). No left turns, EVER, and the HKL trams roam the streets looking for unsuspecting out of towners to run into.
Requires most driving skill: Kuopio, Finland in the wintertime. Plenty of hills and stoplights to guarantee that you WILL get stuck going uphill. Outside of city center then you have steep downhill right handers with blind driveways that you are almost guaranteed to miss as your Nokians are desperately clawing for traction – also equally exciting for the poor fellow that was trying to get on the main road.
Mentally challenging: Austin, TX. Rush hour, 95F, no breeze, intense sunlight that laughs at your AC (or lack thereof), and you have your choices of permanently red stop lights on the surface streets or freeways that aren't flowing at all.
Helsinki? It's a real pleasure to drive compared to Tampere, Finland (during normal traffic, rush hours are a different thing). Where else do you get EVERY traffic light turn red right in front of you – on purpose, so as to "reduce traffic"? Naturally, you can reach a green wave by speeding. But bear in mind that the municipal transport buses don't care a heck about the stoplights, so you can't trust on the green light if there's a bus route on the crossing street.
You know what would be nice? If good old boy system would allow someone to be put in charge that had refreshing new ideas like "Reducing traffic by making the systems work better".
Or you could put a pharmacy technician in charge of the whole thing and watch hilarity ensue 😉
I could rant forever about how the traffic and roads are managed here but I fear that might cause severe depression and alcoholism and lead to unemployment, homelessness and an early death; freezing to death while hugging a can of Sinol under some bridge in Kontula. So I'm just going to say that the past week I spent driving in Sweden and Norway was much nicer. Everything just worked a lot better.
Pretty much anywhere in New York… All the freeway exits seem to have been designed when the land was first settled, and thus only needed to accommodate horse drawn buggies that traveled at a max speed of 5mph. A 90 degree angle straight off the highway is treacherous enough, but the drivers around there seem to expect you to take it at speed and will honk at you if you so much as hit the brakes.
Also, the potholes…. Great unholy fuck, I have never seen such horrendous potholes. I never thought anything would make me thankful for Highway 80 in California, but the entire wheel swallowing potholes in NY make ours look like botts dots.
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/3epbA3W.jpg" width='500">
+1 Traffic on FDR drive makes Gumball look relaxing. The shtuff I've seen happen on FDR is just unreal
I felt seriously stressed out pretty much the entire time, and I consider myself to be an above average driver. I suppose I might get used to it if I was there for longer than a week, but that was long enough to convince me that I didn't want to be there longer than a week…
Now we know where the moon landings were really filmed….
Picture looks like a game of battleship went awfully serious.
<img src="http://hooniverse.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Vintage-SF.jpg" width="500">
By the way, the last time I drove my '59 Ford to San Francisco, it looked nothing like this.
Mine was Wedgewood Blue and Colonial White Styletone, not Torch Red and Raven Black two-tone.
And that '60 Pontiac flattop is glorious.
That picture is in the Fisherman's Wharf area of SF which is full of tourists but flat. Because I am not used to it, I find driving in the very hilly areas of SF gives me major anxiety. It's things like blind turns onto steep downhill streets that are like driving off into the air. And the downhill streets themselves, some of which are so steep that I have no idea how fast I can go and still maintain control of the car, brake at the bottom and such, so I put the car in first and creep down at 10-15 MPH.
The worst for me is DC and that is simply because I don't know enough of the local roads to avoid traffic jams.
I don't mind driving in NYC in fact I sort of enjoy it. Driving in Manhattan is just a huge game of chicken with taxis and playing beat the traffic – if you know where your going. If not you're sitting in gridlock. A good rule of thumb is if you are leaving NYC or coming from NJ, listen to the traffic report (on 1010 Wins) and head for where they say it is clogged and stay away from where they say it is clear. By the time you get to the crossing that they say is clear everyone else who heard it is clear went there and jammed it up, the clogged ones are clear. Also stay off Broadway, and Park Ave, avoid Columbus Circle, never use the West Side Highway during normal hours, use 79th st to cut across Central Park not 65th.
I deal with it pretty well when I have to drive through Boston, but my current car spent most/all of its life in the city until I adopted it several weeks ago.
It's halfway through its fourth clutch at 147k miles.
I don't know what that says, but it doesn't speak well for Boston.
Perth, Australia.
It's not the infrastructure that's so bad, but the drivers and law enforcement.
The *only* thing the police generally seem to care about is speeding (by more than 3 km/h). It's really impossible to explain until you see it, but the complete disregard of others is what sets Perth drivers apart.
Occasionally the police will bust someone for "hooning" (actual term), but almost never for anything else. I've spent a few evenings on youth programs while parked in shopping centre parking lots. One evening I saw numerous drug deals go down, and the patrolling cops did nothing. One drunk bogan pulled a couple of donuts in his Commodore, and cops appeared from everywhere and carted him off.
Priorities.
Has to be Boston. It's extremely navigation-unfriendly. And I don't mean the GPS. I've lived here for over 20 years and there are still certain places that just don't connect in my head. This is especially true of all small streets in Allston/Brighton area but Boston and Cambridge as well. Add to that pretty bad quality of roads (and the fancier the neighborhood, the worse are the roads), moronic drivers and not so great weather about 8 months out of 12 and you get the picture.
On the reverse side, I'm so used to Boston's twisted streets that when I went to NY with its grid-like pattern I was totally confused.
GPS has been anti-helpful in Boston. The first time I went there, my plane got delayed, and I didn't get to the place I was staying until 2am. At which point, I learned something fascinating about Boston addresses. In Boston, you can have an address on one street while having the structure physically located around the corner on a different street almost a block away from the street the address is listed for. This made for an absolutely hilarious half an hour when I was exhausted from a delayed cross country flight and just wanted to go to bed. Also, cold.
I love London but then I know where I am going. I loved Naples (Naples Italy that is) Utterly chaotic; traffic coming from every direction, traffic lights entirely optional and I was armed with an Alfa Romeo. Magic! I have also survived NYC although even I learned not to dis the cab drivers…SF and LA this summer.
Where I have no desire to drive whatsoever is Makati City, Manila. In fact anywhere much in the Philipines – traffic going nowhere, kids and old people and donkey carts in the margin and old ladies in the middle of the road plus the diesel fumes, the jeepneys and the lack of any progress – even in a Suburban with a driver and an armed guard… (loved the place though, just not to drive myself)
DC. Tourists and Diplomats with immunity. Beltway sucks. Forget about it if it rains or snows. Cops and red light cameras everywhere. Easy to get lost and get into some bad areas. Expensive fuel, insurance, emissions testing and registration.
San Francisco is at the top of my list, but probably only because I've only driven in the US, and not in NYC. SF was laid out pre-automobile, it is constrained by geography, the active geology of the area helps thrash the pavement, and it has way more traffic than street and parking capacity. It's an awesome little tangled nightmare of a town. I generally take the subway when I'm going to SF. There are a few exceptions (and I admit, I like testing my left foot on the hills occasionally), but it's usually an awful enough idea that I just avoid it.
NYC or a number of other cities elsewhere in the world (I'm looking at you, Beijing) would easily trump, but I've spent enough effort setting my life up to avoid stupid traffic that I see no need to topple SF's title anytime soon. Besides, this way, it's just one more way that Frisco is The City.
Paris. Hands down. Why? Because the drivers are by the worst: relentless, ruthless, merciless. Driving as if they're in boxcars, and hyper-agrsssive by doing so. People tend to think Italy is bad, but at least most Italians have an eye on their surroundings and will let you live if you keep the pace and go with everybodys flow. Parisians will kill you and complain afterwards why you've been in their way.
Otherwise, traffic-wise? London. Built in a time when cars simply didn't exist, so even the throughways are one-lane only, mostly. Crossing town can take you a day, literally. Makes Los Angeles seem like a large motorway.
The worst place I've experienced was the old Crosstown Commons at the junction between MN-62 and I-35W in Minneapolis & Richfield MN. Before the redesign it was congested for more than 12 hours a day.
Ooh, good call. Had a very unpleasant afternoon towing my sailboat through there at rush hour, with lane closures.
pittsburgh
there is no semblance of a grid system, there are hills everywhere, and the drivers are terrible.
on the other hand, the views are fantastic