Same in Boston. I don’t drive in Boston. Public transportation is good…and it’s a very walkable city. Driving INTO the city is a royal pain. I live less then 40 miles away and the commute can easily be 1-3 hours.
That is like my wife never could get the hang of paper maps so I got a garmn GPS that worked OK untill we crossed a time zone another thing she never could get the hang of.
As far as riving in other countrys I have driven in Canada and Mexico unless you can cosider NYC and LA another country
I don’t understand. Why? Does crossing into a different time zone change the map somehow?
GPS needs an accurate time reference in order to be able to show where you are located on the map. Maybe something to do with that?; i.e. can see the map ok, but can’t see where you are located?
Interesting fact: When you use GPS, you are very directly using Einstein’s theory of relativity. Each satellite transmits to your GPS unit what it’s on-board clock says the time is. The relativity problem is that the GPS satellites are moving very fast overhead, so there’s a 7 microsecond relativity time adjustment for that, and the satellite’s also experience less of earth’s gravity b/c they are so high off the ground, and there’s a 40 microsecond relativity time adjustment needed for that in the other direction. Einstein said moving clocks run slower, and clocks in a lower gravity field run faster. It’s always something …lol …
When I was working OTR I would call home everyand day about the same time and she would get confused when it was 1 to 3 hours later than she thought it should be never could get her to understand.
Heh heh. I was just going from 142nd to 150th, to 160th and needed to know if that was the direction to take me out of town or not. Seemed a reasonable question. Didn’t even get into left right, north south.
Said before but I had our graphics artist do some building evacuation maps. I looked at them and she had South at the top. I guess we could have just turned them upside down but I had her do them over. Guess they never covered maps in art school.
You want to confuse someone about time zones, try calling the States from Japan, or South Korea, or the Philippines, or Australia; or calling from Scotland, Spain, Germany, Saudi Arabia, or South Africa…
Depending on the time of day, not only may you be calling them at night and it your day or you call at night and it’s their day, but it could be their tomorrow or even their yesterday…
After 30-years in the Air Force, the wife and I stopped trying to figure out “As the World Turns…” and she learned ZULU Time (Google it…)…
As I post this, it is proximately 10:50 PM EST, or 2050 Hrs, or 02:50 UTC,
If I remeber right Okinnawa Japan was 24 hours time difference.
As I write this in Virginia, it is 1:00 AM EST, Wednesday, it is 2:00 PM, Wednesday, Okinawa time… That is with Spring Forward, Day light Saving Time… So, Yeah…
Were you stationed there or visiting there trying to call back home and not wanting to wake everyone up in the middle of the night?
So, if you had tried to call me from Okinawa two hours ago, I would be in your yesterday…
I have a bad eye [ born that way so I was not in the service but I do thank all of y’all who was in ] my daughter was in the air force and was stationed there.
I presume you are speaking of Manhattan driving. Oh no! I have another funny story. I was there on a Manhattan long weekend holiday, a pedestrian in the Wall Street area one Friday afternoon, about 5:30 pm. As you might expect, a whole lot of commuter traffic was driving past, trying to get away from the office, over the bridge, & on the way out of town for the weekend. Then notice this older homeless-looking man is blocking traffic, drivers honking their horns. He’s laying crosswise, stiff as a board, on top of one of those cement traffic dividers, going up and down like a teeter-totter as the cars went by, feet sticking out into traffic. Everyone on the sidewalk was looking at the situation, but didn’t know what to do. I suggest to this other guy we should go out and rescue him. He agrees, so away we go, another man says he’ll stop traffic, and we go out & grab the guy (smelling of whiskey) off his cement beam teeter totter and carry him back to the sidewalk.
I have been driving around in a couple countries (Spain, portugal, USA, Perú and Canada), and some of the differences seemed interesting to me.
In the end i tried finding a website or place were al this driving related differences appeared or were listed, but didnt find much.
As result im a software engineer, so i decided to make this website myself, free and with no ads.
Its basically got the basic comparisons between driving rules and facts in countries, and other interestinng information related to driving
If anyone feels like they needed something like this, feel free to check it out!!
Roadsenses - Driving comparisons and Resources
Or here are some other examples for pretty cool comparisons pages:
Will the site turn in to an ad blasting site complete with AI generated content after the SEO phase is complete? And why use Cloudflare to host the site? That’s not exactly in line with what a private web developer who is making a for the public website with no advertising would do.
Late to the discussion but when I see Boston being compared to other areas, I always think of this meme. Which, by the way, is entirely accurate:
NYC’s grid system for streets is definitely more “direct” than in Boston, but let’s not forget that the grid system only starts at Houston Street, and a considerable part of Southern Manhattan’s streets are just paved versions of the meandering old cow paths that date back to the early Dutch era.
Edited to add A map of the original layout of lower Manhattan, with many streets following the same path today, even though their names may have changed over the years:
I avoid driving in Boston or NYC. Both have very good public transit systems. And if you like to walk, Boston is a very walkable city. You can easily walk almost everywhere in Boston in under an hour. Whenever I go into Boston, I park at either Alewife or Wellington T and then take the T (subway) in. Wellington T brings you into North Station and the Garden. I’d park at Alewife when my daughter was in college at MIT and then graduate school in Harvard. Her apartment was a block away from a Red-line T stop.
+1
When I go to Boston, I usually stay in a hotel in Newton, fairly close to a T station. For my most recent visit, I stayed in Cambridge, and the T station was very close to my hotel.
I haven’t driven in Manhattan since sometime in the '90s. It’s just so much less stressful (and cheaper!) to park in Jersey City, take the PATH train into Manhattan, and then use the MTA.
Whenever we visit NYC - we stay in Stamford CT. There are several hotels not far from one of the main train hubs and then it’s only a 45 minute train ride directly to Grand Central Station. Hotel prices in Stamford are 1/3 of the same hotel in NYC.
I wish I hadn’t either, but sometimes end up doing it. When we’re around NYC we’re in what was my mother in law’s place in Riverdale. It’s not all that conveniently situated relative to public transport. But it’s one block off of the Henry Hudson Parkway, so it’s often easier to just hop on there and go.
My most trying driving experience was in England. We were in London, had a wedding to attend out in the countryside, and several people to transport. So I ended up in a rented mini-van having to get around and out of and then back into London. It took constant concentration to reverse my brain’s programming for right side driving. Once out of the city it was easier, but it was still just a lot of mental labor. I think I told everyone to stop talking.
For me, it’s not just in The UK, where they drive on the “wrong” side of the road. Because the traffic laws and signage can be quite different in other countries, I have chosen to not drive in any foreign nation. Public transport in every European country that I have visited was convenient, and usually not expensive, so I have relied on mass transit and taxis when I am overseas.