Now, I'm not certain I believe that, either, as I used to live just up Borough High Street from Elephant & Castle, and it really wasn't a terror at all. Moreover, there were all those excellent kebab shops to distract you from any danger. OTOH, I didn't actually drive it, only hop, skip, and jump through it, or ride the Tube under it.
]]>As someone who used to pop out of a side turning onto the NCR just above the HLG in the morning, and who would descend the A40W slip road only to turn immediately left off it at the bottom in the evening, I was using bits of it that most drivers didn't notice. But then I was a local - the Tube station in its middle was one of the closest to our house.
I think the reason the Brent Cross complex wasn't voted for more highly is that people think of it as more than one junction, ignoring that you need to know which lane to be in before you arrive at any approach. I'd not want to take a novice through the route from the A4 southbound to the NCR westbound: having to go right two lanes off the sliproad (which isn't a sliproad because you can ignore the whole thing, stay left, and go round Staples Corner rather than over it), while at the same time NCR westbound traffic is trying to leave to get onto the road you're leaving (because they want to get onto the M1, or the A5 or whatever) is intimidating.
So intimidating that I once got rear-ended.
To be fair, there were roadworks, the flyover was being partially contra-flowed so the westbound traffic was dropping from 3 lanes to 2, and one of those was going the other side of the barrier. It was a Monday, it was 6 in the evening, it was dark and it was raining.
I'd just filtered into lane 1. I noticed a car in lane 2 (which was going to go the other side of the barrier) 'looking nervous', so I was prepared for it to switch into my lane. Which it did. And then it stopped dead in front of me, which I didn't expect (the road being clear ahead).
I did an emergency stop, as did the vehicle behind me, but not as effectively.
I reckon it was a case of information overload for the (Bangladeshi) driver in front, but technically it wasn't his fault (I'd been shunted forward to about 6" short of his bumper) so it was the Turk behind me and I that sorted out the prang, in a very British way.
In contrast, the magic roundabouts of Hemel and Swindon are simple. Unusual, but they have a logic to them.
('looking nervous' because at that point I was almost telepathically aware of what drivers around me were up to. I've lost that due to no longer driving under those conditions.)
]]>That's not a real round-about, it's got stop signs at every entry point. The whole point of a round-about is to keep traffic moving by having drivers entering the circle yield to drivers already in the circle. If there's no one in the circle, you're supposed to just keep on going and not stop just because another driver is approaching one of the other entry points.
]]>and/or possibly Restricted Crossing U-Turn (RCUT)
Actually, that entire set of 'innovative intersections' designs from Virginia DOT held my interest.
Apparently someone at the Virginia DOT has decided that "innovative" is the preferred euphemism for FUCKED UP!
]]>Spaghetti Junction has no place on that list. It's boring. It looks like a terrible tangle on the map, but it's a total anticlimax driving through it, no different from any other motorway interchange made entirely of slip roads. You don't even see most of the complexity.
The junctions that usually figure prominently in less "formal" collections are the multiple-core roundabouts in Hemel and Swindon, which are invariably cited by the numerous people who have a defective roundabout-processing algorithm and who panic on overload instead of just getting angry at it. But they don't do anything unique; they use just standard roundabout rules, applied multiple times in rapid succession. Not at all difficult if you bother to see that's what they are, and certainly not terrifying.
Brent Cross never made much of an impression on me, either. All I remember being unusual about it is the odd bit where they've tried to cram some feature of the layout into a space too small for it so awkwardness results, and an overall feeling of dark looming stuff on tall pillars.
These junctions are not "terrifying" because negotiating them is deterministic. Terrifying junctions are ones where you have to make critical decisions on randomness and guesswork. They aren't usually big things in cities with a name of their own. They are things like a country lane joining a fast major road just past the brow of a hill, so approaching high speed traffic doesn't become visible until it's only a second or two away, and instead of being able to look and make sure the road will stay clear while you pull out, you just have to hope it does.
]]>A couple of years ago I was the high speed traffic on something a little like that, down near Salisbury. The annoying thing was that the vehicle wanting to come out of the lane was visible for a while, and ought to have seen me (I had my lights on), and decided to pause for a bit before then pulling out. I'd expected them to wait till I was past, not till I was almost on them.
In the event I went past on the other side of the road — not a recommended manoeuvre, but I seem to steer round stuff when I can rather than slam the brakes on.
I've pulled out of that junction myself, and you actually have plenty of time unless you dither. In which case, please wait till there's a gap.
]]>The entire area of north Berkeley around Arlington Circle was designed and laid out as part of an explicit 1911 campaign to entice the California Legislatature to move the state capital to Berkeley. That's why so many streets, there, are named for California counties (e.g., 'Colusa', etc.). Arlington Circle was intended to be the entrance to a proposed new state capital, and was designed by noted architect John Galen Howard, including the fountain with the four sad-face bears. The initiative to move the capital failed in a statewide vote, leaving the fountain area as a grand entrance to nowhere in particular.
The fountain was completely destroyed by a runaway truck in 1958, but lovingly recreated by Friends of the Fountain and Walk volunteers in 1996.
[1] The Legislature itself threw its weight against the Berkeley initiative for a hilariously familiar reason: Berkeley was a 'dry' municipality, and the legislators couldn't bear the thought of being short on corn squeezins. The Legislature had a history of moving around, since Alta California got wrenched away from Mexico by USN Commodore Sloat sailed into the local capital Monterey in 1846 and announced military occupation, followed by some brush warfare and an 1847 settlement: The initial Constitutional Convention in Monterey two years later picked San Jose, but that was deemed boring, so they moved to Vallejo (boring and rural and dry), Vallejo (worse), then finally Sacramento in 1854 which seemed strategic so that lawmakers could be near the gold-discovery site at nearby Sutter's Mill. But, eek, the Great Flood of 1862 turned the whole Central Valley into an inland sea for a season, and Sacramento into Atlantis. The legislators rowed out to San Francisco for the rest of the year, which at least has hills. Then, back to Sacramento after finally erecting some serious levees.
]]>That's not a real round-about, it's got stop signs at every entry point.
Sad, isn't it? I'm still doing the good work of being an ambassador for the idea of proper roundabouts, and the real obstacle is basically an attitudinal one, not wishing to commit to the concept.
]]>The State Capital building in Benicia is quite beautiful, albeit improbably tiny.
]]>I remember reading about the San Jose era - it was something like the Saloon Capital.
So it was. It helps in interpreting California's post-Mexican history to realise that heroic imbibing was historically about as important to state legislators as it is to BBC announcers.
On a slightly related note, I like to regale visitors to my somewhat sleepy bedroom-community-and-rural-areas county (San Mateo Co.), occupying all of San Francisco Peninsula south of the S.F. city limits, about the county's origin: Originally, it was the southern 80%+ of San Francisco County. When the city fathers set out to curtail Gold Rush-era corruption, they were hampered by vote-tampering originating in the southern hinterlands, paid for by what amounted to local warlords / ranching mafiosi. So, they appealed to the state government in Sacramento to rid San Francisco of, well, us. Everything south of the city limits were decreed sawed off, and consigned to a new (and near-lawless for years longer) county.
That's us, San Mateo County: too evil for the city world-infamous for its Barbary Coast district.
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