Cities with odd street networks

[sparker]

The south side of San Jose, CA -- at least south of San Carlos Avenue -- is laid out in a "fan" pattern, with the east side following Monterey Road (old US 101, now decommissioned CA 82), which cants about 30 degrees east from due N-S, to Meridian (one would think that with that name, it would delineate a N-S trajectory -- but no, it turns about 7 degrees to the east below Dry Creek, and finally to Bascom on the west (old CA 17), which heads straight N-S from the San Carlos central axis for about 3 miles before turning SW in Campbell so as to serve Los Gatos.  First Street (the N. extension of Monterey Road), Meridian, and Bascom are only about a mile and a half apart along San Carlos, but by the time they reach Blossom Hill Road (which skirts the coastal hills to the south) Monterey Road is about 11 miles from Los Gatos Blvd., the Bascom extension.  It's almost a cartoon version of "suburban sprawl" when seen from the air!

[tradephoric]

Compare the road networks of Atlanta and Detroit.  Green lines represent two-lane roads (lowest capacity arterials) and red and dark blue lines are boulevards or 6-lane roads (highest capacity arterials).  Notice how in Atlanta so many major areterials just funnel traffic to the freeways and either dead end or turn into a two-lane road.  Atlanta seems to be so reliant on their freeways.  Detroit is basically the exact opposite (drivers in Detroit rely heavily on major arterials to get around).

ATLANTA:


DETROIT: 

[jakeroot]

Victoria, British Columbia. This city is so incredibly English-feeling, right down to the layout of the roads. Neither the "St" nor "Ave" suffixes follow any sort of cardinal direction. Roads change names frequently, seemingly at random.

[inkyatari]

Us who live in the Chicago / Milwaukee metroplex have life prety easy, for the most part.

[hm insulators]

The downtown area of Santa Barbara is on a grid pattern:



However, the street grid is 48 degrees off from true north, which means that "north" is closer to east than it is to north. Also, the roads (like State Street) turn to pretty much straight east-west once you get out of downtown, which turns what's left of the grid off by about 90 degrees.

The Sylmar/Pacoima area of the San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles) is also a grid that's diagonal in relationship to the rest of the Valley's grid layout.

Honolulu's street system is a grid (with a few diagonal streets breaking up the pattern, such as Kalakaua Avenue and Kapiolani Boulevard) that's tilted askew from the four cardinal directions because of the geography of the island of Oahu. Many smaller towns in Hawaii have streets that meander every which-way because of the mountainous terrain of the islands. If I remember correctly from living on Kauai, Kapaa is one of those towns.

Speaking of streets that run every which-way with no logical pattern, Concord, California is one screwed-up town (sorry, any residents of the place who sees this)! To make matters worse, some of the streets change names. I had relatives who lived there and whenever my folks and/or I would try to see them, we/I would always get lost. Always! And both my late father and I have great sense of direction. My brother also lived in Concord for a while as a paramedic, and even the fire department would get lost on those streets!

[sparker]

The larger cities arrayed along CA 99 in the San Joaquin Valley, from Fresno northward, are laid out in a "dual-grid" pattern, with the original city core (based on the original SP rail line that parallels 99) laid out in a diagonally-oriented grid.  Past a point (that varies from city to city), the grid reverts to a more traditional N-S/E-W approach; any suburbs tend to follow the latter pattern.  When looked at from the air, it looks like a patchwork "quilt" with the center piece askew from the rest of the pattern.  This "system" is seen in Fresno itself, Madera, Merced, Turlock, and Modesto.  Once 99 reverts to a more north-south trajectory starting at Manteca, the cities and towns follow suit, maintaining a more directionally traditional layout.

[Duke87]

In my various drawings over the years I have conceived of towns with radial grids. Here's a quick sketch of what I mean:


I know of no real world examples of this, however.

[Max Rockatansky]

Brasilia:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bras%C3%ADlia,+Brasilia+-+Federal+District,+Brazil/@-15.8074585,-47.9090676,13z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x935a3d18df9ae275:0x738470e469754a24!8m2!3d-15.7942287!4d-47.8821658!6m1!1e1?hl=en

[gp248]

Orlando always confuses me, especially with the positioning of I-4, which is labeled as E-W, but goes almost completely north-south betweed downtown and Sand Lake Rd.

[Max Rockatansky]

Orlando always confuses me, especially with the positioning of I-4, which is labeled as E-W, but goes almost completely north-south betweed downtown and Sand Lake Rd.

Those lakes basically made any grid network impossible.  If you want to see how bad it gets check out FL 15 from Colonial to Naroossee Road....it basically travels through a crap ton of neighborhood streets!  Tracking the older alignments of FL 50 is a complete riot in the Orlando area, that thing was all over the place until it was straightened with Colonial.

[Brian556]

Quote from Max Rockastansky:

Those lakes basically made any grid network impossible.  If you want to see how bad it gets check out FL 15 from Colonial to Naroossee Road....it basically travels through a crap ton of neighborhood streets!  Tracking the older alignments of FL 50 is a complete riot in the Orlando area, that thing was all over the place until it was straightened with Colonial.

The biggest issue I noticed in the Orlando Metro is the very wide arterial spacing compared to the northern Dallas suburbs. I didn't really notice it until I visited Orlando again recently, and started looking for a reason for the severe arterial intersection congestion that occurs at all hours of the day, which is very different from the Dallas area, where pretty much all the congestion is on the interstates, and only at rush hour.

It's not just the lakes that get in the way. There are a lot of swampy areas as well. I still think they could have planned and built much more closely spaced arterials than they did. They just stuck to the old rural road layout way too much, especially in the Kissimmee/Disney area. That area has the worst street layout to me. It's like it was allowed to develop with no thoroughfare plan whatsoever. In fact, the planning is so poor, they are now talking about removing a lot of not-so-old houses in order to extend the Osceola Pkwy eastward

Concerning SR 15: The only odd part is between SR 408 and SR 50. One of the reasons it is so odd (brick one way residential streets with stairsteps) is that it didn't used to go that way. From N to S, from Mills it went west on Robinson, south on Orange/(NB on Magnolia) (SR 527 NB moved from Magnolia to Rosalind in the 90's, just learned that), then back east on Anderson, with eastbound using South St.

Concerning SR 50, it really wound around even more in the Ocoee to Clermont area.

[Max Rockatansky]

15 even used to use Briercliff and Curry Ford Road at one point...that must have been hellish but nowadays it's actually the sneaky route into downtown.  I never understood why 15 was never moved over to Lee Vista which has four lanes for the most part instead of Hoffner.  Hoffner is a terrible and disgusting road that goes by some "just above" cracker hours...hell I don't even think there is really even side walk to this very day. 

In the eastern part of the city I think that Orlando got lucky in that Conway, Semoran and Goldenrod were pretty much straight roads a long time ago.  About the only ones that are really modern in design are Colonial, Semoran, John Young Parkway, Sand Lake....and...ugh....OBT.  Personally when I was living there I always preferred Orange Ave to OBT even though it went directly through downtown given everyone would pile on the former due to I-4 access.  Funny to think Orange Ave was the original US 92/17....it seems overbuilt these days...about the only street. 

Another problem with Orlando is that there isn't enough free roads.  Basically that means every cheap ass is going to use either I-4 or stay on a surface grid that isn't designed for it.  Tampa has a similar issue but at least when you get off on a surface road it tends to flow well because there is an existing grid.  But then again we're talking about a really old city too with Orlando. Most people don't realize that it was county seat of Orange County way back in 1856.

[SD Mapman]

Rapid City, SD has 2 N-S grids separated by an offset grid that follows the creek. As such, if you stay on one road throughout (e.g. Allen Ave./Mt. Rushmore Rd.) you end up being two blocks further west than you started (going south). Rapid also has a problem with street names changing randomly.

[doorknob60]

Nampa, ID has a diagonal downtown core, which switches to a typical cardinal direction grid outside of downtown (with the arterials anyways; much of the in between streets are typical suburban maze. See Meridian if you want a whole city like that!), with exception of the major arterial Nampa-Caldwell Blvd (and paralleling I-84) which continue diagonally. The transitions in and out of downtown can be confusing. Look at the weird discontinuity in Roosevelt Ave, for example.



Boise is kind of similar downtown but a bit less confusing (though due to the size and diversity of topography of the city, there are many different street layouts).

[Rothman]

If we're going that route, San Francisco's grids count, too.

[tradephoric]

I tried to rank the top metros based on "arterial street efficiency" .   Essentially I looked at suburbs that were roughly 20 miles out from the city center and found the most efficient arterial to get into downtown (without taking any freeways).  I looked for major suburbs that radiated out from all directions.  From there, I compared the route distance to the "as the crow flies"  distance to determine the efficiency of the regions arterial network. This is the results I came up with along with a few sample maps to show the idea behind it:

[tradephoric]

The city that caught my eye the most was Phoenix.  The city has a very structured street network.  But they are mainly E/W and N/S streets.  There is only one major street that radiates downtown at an angle.  This leads to a pretty low efficiency street network.

[7/8]

Nice analysis tradephoric!

The city that caught my eye the most was Phoenix.  The city has a very structured street network.  But they are mainly E/W and N/S streets.  There is only one major street that radiates downtown at an angle.  This leads to a pretty low efficiency street network.

I definitely think having diagonal streets can make a big difference for efficiency. That's one thing I like about KW's street network is that the diagonal streets allow for lots of shortcuts (relative to a grid).

Two examples I use all the time:

River Rd to get between King St and Fairway Rd (Kitchener)


Albert St and Central St to get between University Ave and King St (Waterloo)

[Max Rockatansky]

The city that caught my eye the most was Phoenix.  The city has a very structured street network.  But they are mainly E/W and N/S streets.  There is only one major street that radiates downtown at an angle.  This leads to a pretty low efficiency street network.

Plays different with real traffic though.  If one street is busy all you need to do is go a half-block/block over usually to get things back on track.  Usually the back ups happen on streets like Grand Avenue which are diagonals.  I used to a do a zig-zag pattern before the 101 was finished which seemed to work pretty well, but then again I knew most of the bad back up points. 

[silverback1065]

I tried to rank the top metros based on "arterial street efficiency" .   Essentially I looked at suburbs that were roughly 20 miles out from the city center and found the most efficient arterial to get into downtown (without taking any freeways).  I looked for major suburbs that radiated out from all directions.  From there, I compared the route distance to the "as the crow flies"  distance to determine the efficiency of the regions arterial network. This is the results I came up with along with a few sample maps to show the idea behind it:

where are you getting this data

[FightingIrish]

St. Paul, where the downtown streets conform to the river. Jesse Ventura had his infamous comment on late night TV that the street grid was designed by drunken Irishmen.

I'm Irish and absolutely agree with what he said. Having spent plenty of time in St. Paul, I can attest to how screwy it is, especially compared to Minneapolis, which also has its quirks. Milwaukee probably has the cleanest street/address layout. Just name an address, a street name, and section of town, and one can actually find it without a map.

[noelbotevera]

St. Paul, where the downtown streets conform to the river. Jesse Ventura had his infamous comment on late night TV that the street grid was designed by drunken Irishmen.

I'm Irish and absolutely agree with what he said. Having spent plenty of time in St. Paul, I can attest to how screwy it is, especially compared to Minneapolis, which also has its quirks. Milwaukee probably has the cleanest street/address layout. Just name an address, a street name, and section of town, and one can actually find it without a map.

Are the sections of town have distinctive things to tell you what it is, or it is marked by signage? Because in other cities they usually don't mark neighborhoods and you have to look at a map or check on your phone. I can attest to this by going to New York City multiple times and never found the difference between Brooklyn and Queens and only figured out the boundary by looking at maps.

[TheStranger]

If we're going that route, San Francisco's grids count, too.

Here's a sampling of the amount of SF street grids that exist:

- Outside lands area (Sunset/Richmond) which has connectivity with the classic downtown/Fillmore/Marina (north of Market) grid.  The latter connects somewhat with the Haight-Ashbury/Panhandle grid due to Fell and Oak Streets
- Potrero Hill/Dogpatch/Mission/Noe Valley/Castro which connects out to the diagonal South of Market (Central Freeway northwest to the Embarcadero) grid
- Bernal Heights
- Bayview (streets perpendicular to the long portion of 3rd Street)
- Visitacion Valley, which connects to the layout of Daly City's Bayshore neighborhood
- Portola, diagonal to the Visitacion Valley grid
- Excelsior (country-named streets perpendicular to Mission Street)
- Ingleside (south of Ocean Avenue)
- Outer Mission, slightly between Ingleside and Excelsior layouts and near Crocker-Amazon curved grid
- Parkmerced

Non-gridded: Presidio, Forest Hill, West Portal, Diamond Heights

---

Your SF map has one key flaw, in that several freeway routes into the city are being labeled as "arterials", i.e. Route 1 from Pacifica to the SF line, or the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge.  Really, there are only a handful of major arterials that enter the city limits from elsewhere at all, all coming from the south:

from Daly City:
Skyline Boulevard (Route 35)
Lake Merced Boulevard
San Jose Avenue (Route 82/former US 101)
Mission Street
Geneva Avenue (entering southeast to northwest)

Brisbane:
Bayshore Boulevard (former Bypass US 101)
Tunnel Avenue

All other entrances to SF are via freeway (from the south: 280, 101, 1 which has 3 exits between 280 and 19th Avenue; from the north: 101/1, from the east: 80).

One of your blue lines marks a path connecting Route 82/El Camino Real in San Bruno with Airport Boulevard/Bayshore Boulevard (former Bypass US 101) via San Mateo Avenue.  While in the pre-freeway era, San Mateo was a viable connector, today it is a two-lane street serving downtown San Bruno and an industrial portion of South San Francisco, almost entirely local traffic only.

[tradephoric]

Your SF map has one key flaw, in that several freeway routes into the city are being labeled as "arterials", i.e. Route 1 from Pacifica to the SF line, or the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge.  Really, there are only a handful of major arterials that enter the city limits from elsewhere at all, all coming from the south:

Yeah San Fran is unique. I should have said i avoided freeways whenever possible, but with San Fran you really can't avoid them completely.

[Duke87]

It's not just the lakes that get in the way. There are a lot of swampy areas as well. I still think they could have planned and built much more closely spaced arterials than they did. They just stuck to the old rural road layout way too much, especially in the Kissimmee/Disney area. That area has the worst street layout to me. It's like it was allowed to develop with no thoroughfare plan whatsoever. In fact, the planning is so poor, they are now talking about removing a lot of not-so-old houses in order to extend the Osceola Pkwy eastward

The sense I get is that Florida isn't into the concept of reserving ROW for future use. Combine this with rapid growth and fiascos inevitably ensue.

See for example what happened with SR 429 - OOCEA went and built the southern half ending at US 441, but no one bought up or otherwise reserved any of the land past the end of it necessary to extend it further. Said land quickly got gobbled up by private developers and built over. OOCEA then had to rip up a perfectly good section of freeway only 10 years old so the road could be realigned to a corridor a couple miles to the west that was still free of development in order to finish it.