Worst City Planning

[pona12 3]

I nominate Norman Oklahoma and Oklahoma City,What state do ya think its in?!?

http://www.pickatrail.com/sun/n/america/topo_map/norman_oklahoma/norman_topo_map.jpg - Norman

https://p6.secure.hostingprod.com/@www.newatlas.com/ssl/images/okcproperwall.jpg - OKC

Both are a result of the build as you go method that leaves many buisness districts isolated by squirvy roads.Although trafic is somewhat breezy The road layout is complicated especially around Oklahoma City.Some Freeways swurve around and one turns into a road!

[astrosfan27 0]

my vote goes to Houston all the way. Los Angeles may have terrible roadways but Houston has almost no planning.

[Noooo245 0]

Allentown PA they have a busy street stop for a block and then continue it stinks!

[timchilestone 0]

marakh,

An A-road in the UK is merely one which links two primary destinations. The A1 starts in central Edinburgh and finishes in central London, and a lot of the city sections are on residential streets.

An Ax(M) is an A-road built to Motorway (Mx) standards - there are minimum lane widths, must have a hard shoulder, emergency phones, no traffic lights, no roundabouts etc.

As for car free cities, Cambridge (in Cambridgeshire, not the USA) definitely wins at this. Lots of people hate it, but the central area is controlled by rising bollards that only let buses and taxis through. There are no motorways around the city, just the M11 to the west and the A14 to the north, and traffic does back up at times on the two designated ring roads, but generally things flow pretty well - better, in fact, than they did ten years ago when I started driving and you could still drive all around the city centre.

Planning-wise, it isn't really planned at all - as with most UK towns it's much older than the car (the first major development of Cambridge was 2050 years ago; the university was 800 years old last year)

[+Guest MCjohnstown]

Everyone seems to think that greater freeway capacity will ease traffic problems, but the truth is that the traffic will simply grow to fill it to capacity, often making the problems worse.

[Htark1 5]

I think the most most boring city is Chicago... Look at the landscape! It's flat and just a gitter of roads and houses. And one big lake. There is no hills or forests.

[tzotzil99 2]

Houston, ugly as sin, hot as you know where, pointless as a chicken's lips, just the worst place to drive through (no walking unless suicidal) and have to look at, and at night its so humid and everything stinks. at least LA has mountains when the smog lifts and it runs out against a beach, not mud flats and industrial waste. lots of crap cities here in Amurrka but Houston is truly specially heinous. what a great thread this is, luv the trash talk

[Shingure 56]

I can admit one thing. Houston is horrible not because of it's roads. It's because of it's airport.

I remember I was returning from Las Vegas and me and my family missed our connecting flight to Philadelphia. Houston's airport is 30 miles away from the nearest hotel and 20 miles from downtown! Not only that but it's located in the middle of nowhere. Houston is a city that is SPRAWL and that's why I don't like it. Some parts of it are so disconnected from the core, that they might as well be their own towns. It's pretty bad.

[quicksilver991 37]

You think you've seen sprawl? See Salt Lake City. Apart from an approximately 10 block square downtown area, the entire 15 mi by 25 mi valley is FILLED with low density housing.

[Mike_W 6]

I would say that many of the older cities here on the East Coast have bad city planning. The roads are just there....no rhyme or reason why they were placed where they were. An example from the nearest city to me would be in Worcester. There is a nightmare of an intersection called "Kelley Square". It has about 10 roads coming together with such odd and complicated angles that signal lights are not present. Its a real pain trying to navigate your way through there at rush hour.

[Madri 3]

A city that has that has some bad city planning is my hometown of Pensacola, Florida. The city is the oldest city in America founded years before St. Augustine, saying this the city has a very old grid plan on the Northside of the city there are wide avenues that can get you through the city with ease, but there is only 3 major highways that can get you to downtown, the city has some rough neighborhoods in this transition between northside and downtown. Since the city is quite old there was never enough room for 'projects' in what most people picture. Instead they look like normal neighborhoods that you can easily go into without even knowing you are in that neighborhood. One good thing is the city's location with water on 2 sides with traffic passing through to Pensacola Beach to the south. Traffic will back up for miles and miles on either bridge across the bay this happens usually when an accident happens generally on the 6-lane I-10 bay bridge. The metro region is small home to only 500,000 people with about 200,000 of them in the 'east bay' or Santa Rosa county which is like any other suburban area in America. The city is very often congested since the city will never widen highways when its needed. To sum all of this up the city of Pensacola has moderately bad planning compared to its age.

[Madri 3]

Originally posted by: Htark1

I think the most most boring city is Chicago... Look at the landscape! It's flat and just a gitter of roads and houses. And one big lake. There is no hills or forests.

quote>

Trust me hills are not exciting. In Atlanta you might drop 100-200 feet in elevation between intersections in downtown. So hills don't add excitement, but Atlanta's traffic is just as bad as Chicago's sad thing is Atlanta is half the size.

[Madri 3]

Originally posted by: the00guvna

You think you've seen sprawl? See Salt Lake City. Apart from an approximately 10 block square downtown area, the entire 15 mi by 25 mi valley is FILLED with low density housing.quote>

Okay, not to say anything against SLC, but it has roughly 1.7 million people in its metro area in about a total area of n/a but it is a very large area of Utah.

Atlanta is home to 5.7-5.8 million people in roughly 8,300 square miles, in the center of this mass area is Fulton, Gwinnett, and Dekalb counties. (Fulton:1,033,756; Gwinnett:808,167; Dekalb:747,247). Atlanta is quite more developed and sprawling than Salt Lake will most likely ever be.

[paroxysm 2]

I'm going to have to vote for San Jose, CA... it's basically solid suburbs from the 280 down to Gilroy, with only three major highways running through (the 280, plus the 880 and 101 are quite narrow). It's terribly griddy and traffic is horrific from Downtown to Saratoga pretty much most of the day.

[Wiimeiser 444]

How could anyone forget Melbourne? The Eastern Ring Road was meant to go straight from the end of the current ring road to the Eastlink/Ringwood Bypass, now they're trying to go straight through Bulleen instead. The Healesville Freeway still hasn't been built. Also, it was originally meant to replace Riversdale Road and join the Monash Freeway where it used to terminate at Barkly Avenue/Twickenham Cresent when it was first built. (On that note it wouldn't surprise me if the Monash was originally meant to go up Burke Road and join the current North East Link). And don't get me started on the Geelong Outer Ring Road, either. Whoever came up with that should be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun. I do like the idea of the Outer Outer Ring Road between Lara and Baccus Marsh, though the northern terminus could use a redesign.

Melbourne 2040: http://images.theage.com.au/file/2010/10/10/1977327/Melbourne2040.pdf

Melbourne 1969: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_AfZBOmqon4I/Sj4m7Pwys6I/AAAAAAAAG9U/ZdtJyNOEHNU/s1600-h/0604-freewayplan-large.jpg

[Madri 3]

Originally posted by: iowndiscti

i would say that the city with the worst city planning is Detroit, simply because they did everything backwards here. firstly the freeways and highways are adequate enough to support the population, but they have not been repaved or upgraded in the past 50-60 years. this leaves pot holes the size of elephants in the middle of a 3 lane 75 mph road [ not a good ideal unless you wanna see some die]. secondly they zoned Detroit incorrectly, the ratio for residential way outnumbers the amount of jobs that we provided via commercial and industrial. they is very little commercial in Detroit. in fact, the only shopping mall actually within city limits is Eastland [ which is like 20 miles for anyone living on the west side] and the CBD is way to small for this city. Thirdly, they planned way too many major roads, in Detroit, Michigan its a major road one every 16 blocks give or take, which is way to many for a population of only 800,000 people

my second nomination is Los Angeles because , they don't have rail [ subway or elevated] mass transit, they can have it cause of the earthquakes. so this leaves a city of 4,000,000 people completely reliant on cars.quote>

Okay, I agree with you all the way Detroit is horribly planned. But, LA has a good plan, people seem to over look it. The city and metro area is home to 13-17 million people. The inter-city of LA is the better planned half of the area. The highways are the way they are because they are 10+ lanes usually, but no room to ever expand them. The city has a few metro lines. But only 1 subway line (red line). There are a few ground rail lines, but they are a joke! they run into things very often and kill people sometimes. Just wanted to remark on that almost untrue statement.

[figgy 10]

I vote Dublin. I don't think Dublin is that bad as most of the congestion was washed away after they built the port tunnel and imposed a 3 axle ban but in Dublin there are TWO TRAM LINES right? So, if you were to describe public transport it would be INTERCONNECTED right? So I wonder WHY they  DIDN'T CONNECT THEM?! There isn't even a BUS! You have to WALK, which might make me sound lazy but in Ireland it rains almost CONSTANTLY so you get SOAKED! WHY?! 

[Madri 3]

http://www.wsbtv.com/video/26338478/index.html

l

Watch this video, mainly I wanted to show you the traffic in Atlanta, note the time of day. The highway is nearly 5-6 possibly 7 lanes wide and not a single vehicle can move. Earlier today on the news they were broadcasting a 10-lane highway with about 1-2in on snow on it. One half of this highway(5 lanes) were completely blocked nothing was moving at all massive spawl will be Atlanta's great dismise. I have a Georgia Studies class we have 2 chapters of our book dedicated to Atlanta and Atlanta alone, 1 is for the history and the second is for the transport and solutions to the spawl. The very first picture in this book was a massive traffic jam on a 16 lane highway in downtown with smog! Atlanta is faced with a problem and it is that the city and its metro area has no boundaries! Well there are some mountains (3,000ft) to the far north but no major rivers or anything. Time to talk transit Atlanta has a metro system called MARTA, but it is only aloud in 2 counties and to connect to the Airport. Cobb County(4th largest county in metro area) will not allow MARTA, but have the massive highway 285 run right through it. To get a figure what I am talking about go to Atlanta's Wikipedia page or google earth it.

y

Even though Atlanta is kinda lucky considering it got to rebuild after the Civil War.

[Madri 3]

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRcxpgbAq4dEP8L0cuwjpABAdnriwbrkaqDYadA1x27-5P_XKK6Bw

Okay look at this picture you see traffic right?

Now try to see through the smog to see the Atlanta Skyline

[charisma_ck 0]

I agree with you and I would like to add one more city.

VANCOUVER! THE WORST PLACE FOR DRIVERS!

You know, driving from Coquitlm or more east side like Maple Ridge to UBC is such a pain

mentally and physically because there's no freeway and the length is more than 40 km.

only some areas offer 60~70km/h but 80% of the road is 50km/h.

The average km/h in Vancouver is 18.5 for Vancouver and 20 - 23km for other towns.

Also if you take the bus, it will take 3 hours for 1 trip. Rush-hour? type GG.

[Alejandro24 575]

Mexico City is the city with worst urban planing. Why? Just simply: Imagine a city growing with the same speed like a nuclear reaction or an atomic bomb. That city is a REAL TOTALLY CAOS.

[Wustmann 174]

In my opinion, the worst city planning would be in Madison, WI where next to the beautiful state capital is the University of Wisconsin's coal power plant. Madison's skyline driving in from the east looks so out of place.

[9988 428]

I think worst city planning has Slovaki city Kosice. There is THIS about one mile from the city center(and exactly in this city is now ice hockey world cup)

[MN121MN 11]

Most are not as bad as Indonesia's network:

-Jakarta plans to add new bus line, though the fact remains that traffic jams still occurs and special bus lanes are often used by cars and motorcycles, not to mention the periodic flood...

-Surabaya is building a elevated highway toll across town, even though the mayor and its administration, foreign experts and its citizen disagree because they have negative effects on enviroment and they cause more traffic jams, the main reason the central administration forced us to build that is so that the capital remains the highest earning (predicted in the next 2 years, Surabaya and East Java (the same) income would surpass Jakarta).

-Only in Indonesia where you can find power outage/blackout in an international airport at night, and regular power/water outage to "fix" it.

-Only in Indonesia can someone find a large hole in the middle of the road.

-Only in Indonesia can public transportation like bus or transport service stop on a side of a busy road and cause traffic jams.

-Only in Indonesia where planes can crash often and trains derail.

-Only in Indonesia you can find street vendors in the side of the road (and I mean literally the side of the road, not the sidewalk).

-Only in Indonesia can someone experience a flood the height of a half of a sedan..

So if yo think yours are worse, wait till you see my country.

[timchilestone 0]

This video explains a lot about London's lack of high-capacity roads:

Very well done, especially the comment that "The North Circular charges through the suburbs like a twat" - it does. The North Circular is evil.

Also watch episode 1 which is about unfinished bits of the Tube and explains the Green Belt.

  Edited May 8, 2011 by timchilestone  

[willemvanoranje 0]

Most are not as bad as Indonesia's network:

-Only in Indonesia can someone find a large hole in the middle of the road.

-Only in Indonesia can public transportation like bus or transport service stop on a side of a busy road and cause traffic jams.

-Only in Indonesia where planes can crash often and trains derail.

-Only in Indonesia you can find street vendors in the side of the road (and I mean literally the side of the road, not the sidewalk).

-Only in Indonesia can someone experience a flood the height of a half of a sedan..

So if yo think yours are worse, wait till you see my country.

Point taken. I cannot compare because I do not know Jakarta, but I definetely vote for São Paulo. Fits almost everything of the above description.

[stlsuburb 2]

St. Louis isn't that great either.

All their main arteries through the burbs are always bad during rushhour and they need to be expanded. What they did with the new I-64 is nice but they should have widened it more. 70 is always bad and it gets sketchy at times going down no-co to the city, but the express lanes are helpful every once in a while. There is also a crapload of construction all the time. And don't get me started trying to get around downtown when anything is happening there.

[RipRap 4,400]

I would say, Manila, Philippines. The roads were just too congested (Elpifanio De los Santos Avenue (EDSA), with 5 lanes at each side) was still overcrowded. Some streets doesn't even have a sidewalk. There is no bus transit and the LRT/MRT network was useless and crowded. You couldn't even find a proper stoplight nor a proper crosswalk... There were no proper garbage and recycling area, and there was no affordable housing for almost half of its population. If you are complaining on the narrowness of curbs or the distance of a nearest highway, you should be sorry if I tell you that there is no highway/expressway system and the 2 main Philippine Expressways in Manila (The North Luzon and the South Luzon Expressways) were not even connected altogether! Plus... The Transit Systems were paid in distance.

EDSA at Taft Avenue Junction... As you see, there were no road markings.

MN121MN, on 06 May 2011 - 11:44 AM, said:

Most are not as bad as Indonesia's network:

-Only in Indonesia can someone find a large hole in the middle of the road.

-Only in Indonesia can public transportation like bus or transport service stop on a side of a busy road and cause traffic jams.

-Only in Indonesia where planes can crash often and trains derail.

-Only in Indonesia you can find street vendors in the side of the road (and I mean literally the side of the road, not the sidewalk).

-Only in Indonesia can someone experience a flood the height of a half of a sedan..

So if yo think yours are worse, wait till you see my country.

You should see the Philippines too.

  Edited June 12, 2011 by 111222333444  

[SamJam 9]

This was a fun thread to read. Thanks for posting, everyone. :-)

Poor planning does not necessarily have everything to do with poor traffic. New York is an excellent example of this--the city (I speak of the central main city of Manhattan) is based entirely on a grid, and there is absolutely no more efficient way to lay down streets. The streets are numbered instead of named, which makes it very easy to know how far away you are from your destination and where you need to go to get there. And they are mostly one-way streets, which means extremely rare left turns with oncoming traffic. Folks, that is very efficient. What went wrong in New York is the speed at which it grew and the density at which it stands now. I'm sure when the city was being laid out, nobody expected there to be 28 000 people per km².

From personal experience, I need to disagree with a couple of earlier posts:

The Toronto waterfront LOL. The eastern potion is all abandoned industrial buildings. THanfully its going to be demolished and rebuilt. The only question is when considering TO doesnt have any money...ever...LOL

The fact that the lower-east side of Toronto's urban core is a dilapidated industrial zone does not mean it was poorly planned. Those two ideas aren't even in the same ballpark. Toronto is one of the oldest major cities in North America, and as such it began as an industrial waterfront town. The same can be said for New York, Montreal, Philadelphia, and more. The industrial sections have been transformed over time because rail and water transportation has been de-emphasized in favour of road and air travel. Heavy dirty industry has shrunk considerably over the last few decades. That doesn't mean the area was poorly planned. In fact, Toronto, New York, Montreal, and Philadelphia were all planned excellently in their times. Perhaps it would be better to say that they have done a poor job of evolving into modern commercial cities, but even that's a stretch.

The only thing I could say negatively about Toronto's planning was its dumping of the freeway plans of the 1960s. Although the Gardiner and DVP were built and are still absolutely necessary as the backbones of downtown's commuter routes, there were a few other freeways planned (notably another north-south route on the west side of downtown, as well as a crosstown route that would have gone across the areas of what are now Rosedale and The Annex). People will forever argue about the pros and cons of freeways 'til they're blue in the face, but despite the negative effects of such a downtown freeway plan on vibrant, livable neighbourhoods, had those freeways been built in Toronto the city would be a much different place today... possibly easier to get around in, at least.

But again, that wasn't poor planning. It was just citizens refusing to have their city divided and chopped up into sections by rows of freeways. You can't blame any city council for something the people wanted--and got.

My hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba has very poor ideas about planning. The intersection of Rte 95, Rte 42 and Rte 62, locally known as confusion corner, while not bad from a congestion point of view, would be extremely confusing to out-of-towners. I even get confused by it and I lived here all my life.

In Winnipeg 30 or 40 cars will sit waiting at a red with no one going in the other direction. In addition, while most cties divert traffic off main roads onto local streets and then into malls, Winnipeg builds intersections just for the purpose of geting from the main routes into the malls.

One intersection does not make a poorly-planned city. Winnipeg, like Toronto and New York, is based largely on a grid. Not to mention the fact that many of the core streets are one-ways, and virtually all the core streets are nice and wide. One-ways tend to be three or four lanes, and the two-way streets tend to be four or six lanes. I visited Winnipeg a few years ago and downtown, even in the middle of the work week, was not congested or problematic to drive through. Even Confusion Corner isn't really confusing when you understand the logic behind the intersection. The way the three streets are laid out makes sense. I will admit, though, that the traffic signs don't help. The pictured sign a few posts after your makes it look like there is a ramp or a roundabout, but in fact there is not. It's a misleading sign. As long as a visitor looks at a road map before heading out (which you should always do anyway!) there really shouldn't be any problem at that corner. A quick look at it on Google Maps (satellite view) reveals that there isn't even much traffic congestion there.

The advantage that the 'Peg has over Toronto and New York is that it is growing at a very slow pace. That gives city planners lots of time to prepare and make necessary upgrades. T.O. and N.Y. grow so fast that by the time planners have a roadway scheme, the traffic has already grown to be a problem and a new roadway does little to alleviate it. I think Winnipeg planners are on the right track. Upgrading the Perimetre Highway to a full freeway would be a good idea, and the inner ring road (whatever it will be called) should get get moving, too.

Overall... I think if there's one place I've visited that really frightens me, traffic-wise, is Vancouver. It is a gorgeous and truly awesome place to see, don't get me wrong--but it suffers from the same problem as many U.S. cities do: it sprawls. Though it is laid out on a grid (even in the 'burbs) you almost have to drive or use public transit to get from A to B. The downtown peninsula is quite dense but it is an excellent mixture of business and residential space so a lot of people actually walk everywhere they need to go as long as they are in that space. However, the suburbs stretch waaaaaaaay too far for what roads or highways (I should say highway--singular) will realistically allow. The TCH is a nice interregional freeway but unless you're already near it, or your destination is near it, then it is as much of a pain (out of the way) as taking any traffic-signaled road. The only other major freeway in town doesn't even connect to it!

That said, the SkyTrain is a great public transit option (longest automated rapid transit system in the world, actually) but with only three lines it doesn't cover as much sprawling area as is probably should. If you visit the city as a tourist and do most of your sightseeing on the downtown peninsula, Stanley Park, and the North Shore, you should have an easy enough time getting around. But the suburbs, which are equally as worthwhile seeing, have some work to do.

[Jazzmaster 716]

This was a fun thread to read. Thanks for posting, everyone. :-)

Poor planning does not necessarily have everything to do with poor traffic. New York is an excellent example of this--the city (I speak of the central main city of Manhattan) is based entirely on a grid, and there is absolutely no more efficient way to lay down streets. The streets are numbered instead of named, which makes it very easy to know how far away you are from your destination and where you need to go to get there. And they are mostly one-way streets, which means extremely rare left turns with oncoming traffic. Folks, that is very efficient. What went wrong in New York is the speed at which it grew and the density at which it stands now. I'm sure when the city was being laid out, nobody expected there to be 28 000 people per km².

I have to agree with this, it's hard to do much better than laying down streets on a grid, all with one way traffic, and using numbers over names to identify, especially in such a large city. If there were curves and things everywhere, it'd be a bit difficult to understand where you are, where you've been, and where you want to go next. It simply can't be said that a lot of traffic means the city is bad. It's honestly very, very hard to plan so well that everyone is distributed so evenly that there isn't a single traffic snarl. Way too many variables involved (preference of transportation mode being a large one, and America is very automobile oriented).