Will someone tell the Masspike that their flashing signs are DANGEROUS? Really, while navigating a curvy tunnel at 50mph (despite signage for 35mph), with exits every half mile, I do not need to be asked to read an ADVERTISEMENT for “Visit Masspike.com! Join the fast lane!”*
Maybe some of that space could have been used to warn me about the six-inch drop between lanes?*
Or to share the exit number for the roadwork and lane closures at Granite Ave, so that I could have been tucked away to the left and not cluttering up a forced merge?*
In California, green highway entrance signs are the width of a lane, hung high above the road, with nice big letters telling you where to go, easily visible a block or two back. In Massachusetts, green highway signs hide behind shrubbery, directly opposite the road you need to take. And they are the size of my head.*
* “Fucking Massachusetts.”
2 August 2008 at 3:07 am
As an adult immigrant to Massachusetts (I spent my first 29 years in the Midwest, except a couple years in England and Germany), I have concluded that motor vehicle signage in Mass. is based on the following principle: If you need a sign to tell you where to go, you don’t belong here.
That seems to be the reason that intersections usually have street signs for the minor road but not the major road: if you don’t know what the major road is, you’re from out of town, and why should we tell you?
It’s like the joke about the tourist in Vermont who drives his car down a dirt road to a washed-out gully, and spies a farmer in a field on the other side of the gully. The tourist yells out, “How did you get there?” To which the farmer replies, “Born here!”
2 August 2008 at 1:15 pm
Ah yes, I forgot about the failure to ever tell you which road you are actually on.*
I think your principle is completely right. You’d think a city/region selling itself as the birthplace of the American Revolution could be a little more open-minded.*
Side note: I am not very impressed with WordPress’s auto-generator for related posts, which missed my previous rant re Massachusetts driving.
3 August 2008 at 4:54 am
As a former resident of Boston/Cambridge and a *native* Californian, I can say that after having a car for my first year in Boston, I realized my life was much safer doing the public transportation thing.
I’ve seen the WORST driving of my LIFE while living in Boston–and don’t get me started on the PIKE or the horrible SIGNAGE.
[must stop writing...am having New England driving flashback...]
3 August 2008 at 4:09 pm
Oh, the flashbacks are *horrible*. I called my sister who had been there a few months back and we launched into 20 minutes of “and this! and that! and WTF! and such!”
Driving is reason number 1 on my list of why I would *never* want to live in Boston.
16 August 2008 at 1:51 am
This is why Mainers like my wife call them “Massholes.”
19 August 2008 at 4:07 pm
The funny thing is, the Masshole thing came up at my family gathering, and a lot of people didn’t realize that term existed.
16 December 2008 at 4:39 am
That sounds like Perth street signs, in Western Australia. They are either behind shrubberies or just after the road you should have turned down. In some places there are the big friendly green signs, which make you fell like worse about the other dodgy signs.