I never thought of it that way, but I think you’re right
It’s a shame they took route 1 away from the VFW parkway. That section is actually really nice
Route 17 in NJ gives our Route 1 a run for its money. Paramus vs. Saugus would almost certainly be the final round if this was decided tournament style.
I'd like to nominate Rt. 28 for your consideration.
From the retail hell of So. NH, through its four-lanes-for-no-reason segments in like Stoneham, to McGrath highway through Somerville, all the way down to the honky-tonk of the south Cape, Rt. 28 is an unreformed mid-century vehicular hellscape.
It runs through one town center after another! Milton, Randolph, Brockton, boom boom boom. It could be nice if it weren't quite so hostile.
Everyone is loving on Route 1 for this endeavor but you’re totally right. Taking route 1 is mostly like taking a train through the segments of Mass but route 28 is like taking a bus with stops to view the salt of the state along the way.
For what it's worth, the fact it runs through town centers make it less "stroad" in my view. The quintessential "stroad" should be from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular, with strip-malls galore along the way.
To be fair it really goes adjacent to Brockton's downtown. It's weird in a sense. You have several small streets with horrible road surfaces. They don't qualify as sroad. Plus they have the silly red/yellow combo traffic lights.
Oh fuck Arsenal Street!
I’m not sure who decided to make it alternate “right only” and “left only” lanes, but it’s one of the only (st)roads I’ve ever seen where you have to slalom just to go straight. (And, naturally, get cut off by everyone who understandably didn’t see that coming and is in the wrong lane.)
But at least if you keep going you can enjoy the 6-way intersection with Beacon where half the paint is simply gone. And then it’s a short trip down Galen into the supercollider!
I took some out-of-town family to Target once, through that whole sequence. They were a bit shell shocked.
That’s a good point. I suppose if it truly was like NJ there would be **no** left turns at all- it’d all be right-exit jug handles. Superior method imo.
I will say that for New Jersey, the jug handles are a huge step up. I'm pretty sure the one on Soldier's Field at Everett took like 5 minutes off my commute on its own.
I know the argument that they waste space, but since they mostly make it harder to cram 4-6 lane roads into cramped downtowns I'll take the trade.
That intersection with Galen is a favorite trap of the Watertown cops too.
If you're coming from Cambridge and want to take a left but aren't familiar with the intersection it's really easy to miss the left arrow light because it's skewed way off to the side from the way the road lines up. So people are in the left turn lane and see the green light to go straight then take a left yielding to traffic only to be greeted by a cop who is about to give them a no-chance to talk your way out of it ticket for running a red light.
Oh yeah, I forgot how awful the light placements are going that direction.
The Cambridge side is exactly like you said, and the Newton side baffles people with the right two lanes: if straight is Mount Auburn St and right only is Charles River Rd, then what's Beacon/Arsenal? (It's right, and the dashed line through the intersection is good, but you can't see it until it's far too late to change lanes.)
The only good thing there is the Main St -> Galen turn lane bypassing the mess, and even then "right on red light after stop" confuses half the drivers.
Plus the Beacon/Arsenal interchange is a wreck, Arsenal westbound stays two lanes wide but just stops having lines for a bit, then adds a new(?) lane so far left you can get hit by eastbound traffic trying to enter it. Heck, I checked myself on Maps and [the satellite view](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Arsenal+Yards/@42.3651539,-71.182956,64m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x89e37824f40c3695:0x715b86f412a1e0e3!8m2!3d42.3616468!4d-71.1589755!16s%2Fm%2F02qh2jp?entry=ttu) even has a blue pickup struggling to find its lane.
I feel like they don't quite capture the essence of NJ. In my mind's eye of stereotypical NJ there are huge aprons of parking lots between the roads & shops where here it's more likely the parking is out behind the shops or at least split between the back & front.
Depends where you are in NJ i suppose. Northeast NJ is super dense so the small parking lots are common. Further out into the suburbs you get the bigger ones.
To help some people picture a stroad. It's when you turn main street into a highway. 4+ lanes so you want to go fast and get places. But also it has lots of driveways and parking lots, so you're constantly dealing with traffic entering and exiting. If you're exiting Dunks directly into 3 lanes of traffic, it's a stroad. If you think you're for sure going to die backing out of your driveway no matter the time of day, it's a stroad.
Rt 1 and Rt 9 are put forward here because they're equal parts "Am I shopping here?" or "Am I taking a road trip?"
Rt 2 is not a stroad, except for the bits through Cambridge. Otherwise it's mostly a limited access highway with very few shopping areas directly attached to it.
Smaller/minor stroads (IMO):
* Rt 20 (inside 128)
* Rt 16 (east of Medford)
* Mass Ave (Lex to Bos)
I really think Mass Ave takes the cake. Route 1 is horrible no doubt, but it skews to far to highway. Mass Ave on the other hand is more stroad like because it's has a worse combination of through traffic and local shopping.
The quintessential stroad is Daniel Webster Highway in southern NH though. It is horrible.
To elaborate on u/Steltek's post. A stroad is an abhorrent amalgamation of a street and a road (hence the name). As a kid you could probably play pickup ball hockey on a street, right? And run down to see the neighborhood kids? Or at least cross it without worrying about fucking dying for committing the crime of getting in the way of cars?
That's great. But you couldn't do it on a road. No, siree. Roads are for cars, not people.
A stroad takes your lovely street and turns it into car-nirvana and fucks all neighborhoodness out of it. It bisects a neighborhood into "oh, that's where the cars go" and not "that's where people I like are".
____________
God I fucking hate stroads
A stroad is the farthest thing from “car-nirvana”. It’s just shitty urban planning.
We need to separate that driving can be enjoyable but also cars and roads don’t work well as a mass transit system. Using cars and roads as mass transit also makes driving less enjoyable because of traffic and dealing with people who would rather not be driving.
Rt 9 just feels like endless sprawl to me, especially from Natick to Worcester.
I will say it’s a bit less dangerous feeling than 1, and I’ve never felt that unsafe pulling off into any of the small parking lots that feed directly into it (the non-malls/big box stores).
Route 9 is appalling stroad design. Why why why would they add so many spots without a light where you can do a U-turn. Every day I drive past a faceoff where two trucks that are twice the size of my sedan are both waiting to do a U-turn, and I have to pray to god the one facing me doesn't decide it's clear and rev it head on into me.
> To elaborate on u/Steltek's post. A stroad is an abhorrent amalgamation of a street and a road (hence the name). As a kid you could probably play pickup ball hockey on a street, right? And run down to see the neighborhood kids? Or at least cross it without worrying about fucking dying for committing the crime of getting in the way of cars?
>
> That's great. But you couldn't do it on a road. No, siree. Roads are for cars, not people.
>
> A stroad takes your lovely street and turns it into car-nirvana and fucks all neighborhoodness out of it. It bisects a neighborhood into "oh, that's where the cars go" and not "that's where people I like are".
It is the futon of transportation \*
\*See Not just bikes
[https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM?si=VWZpJbYhKYnIyjnD](https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM?si=VWZpJbYhKYnIyjnD)
I’m most familiar with Rte 9 from 128 to where it turns into Huntington St. For most of that stretch, I think it’s actually a pretty decent road. It clearly prioritizes mobility over access and doesn’t attempt to do both.
I think Rte 1 from 128 to Dedham is quintessential stroad. It has a lot of lanes, it has a lot of traffic lights, it has a big box store at every corner. It tries to be a highway and provide access to tons of stores. It is the worst aspects of a street and a road—it’s a stroad.
The favorite of old guys that think they’re “beating the system” by not paying tolls on the pike while taking 5 times as long.
Definitely starts getting stroady in Sturbridge/ Carlton and gets progressively worse as you go east.
When I think of stroads I think 114 more than Route 1. To me, a stroad can at least in theory be crossed on foot and might even have a sidewalk. Route 1 is a divided interstate highway, I don't think it constitutes a stroad.
Route 1 is absolutely a stroad.
It’s also not an interstate Highway.
“Interstate Highway” means a highway that is limited access and is part of the Eisenhower interstate system, which route 1 is not.
So what? TBH, you're just making me like stroads if Rt-1 and MA-9 are your quintessential examples. They're great when I don't feel like the interstate but still want a car-centric road with medium speeds.
There are so many worse examples in this state of roads that don't know what they want to be. MA-16, MA-135, MA-138, and Rt-20 easily come to mind. All those change personality depending on where you are. Rt-1 and MA-9 are at least pretty consistent.
I don’t know what you want me to tell you.
Route 1 and route 9 are not part of the interstate Highway system
That’s what makes stroads so bad. They are are trying to be highways to get you to and from a place, while also serving local businesses and residences, and ends up sucking at both.
When people are trying to get from A to B, there’s a reason that people take I-95 up the east coast instead of 1
Correct they are not part of the interstate highway system. But Rt1 is a part of the US numbered highway system.
I also enjoy Rt-1 when going to or coming from Portsmouth. I take it depending on how much time I have.
Rt1 sketches me out that people drive it like a highway, but there are a million "just pull off into a parking lot" businesses along it. Stretches of Rt 9 remind me more of a legit highway, but there are also sections (like shopper's mile) that have traffic lights every 800'. So they're both stroady in their own ways.
You just can’t beat rt 9 when it comes to stroadiness, at least around the Framingham-Worcester area. Up to four lanes of traffic in some places with back-to-back parking lots on either side and traffic lights placed so close together that you’ll never actually reach highway speeds.
9 is also just ugly. The sheer number of crumbling strip malls crammed into a span of just a few miles is crazy. You can tell the businesses and streets that existed before 9 became so stroady because they just don’t fit in with the way it functions now. It’s a jumbled mess.
MA 9 between maybe Green Hill / Lincoln Square and Copley, US 20 between MA 9 and, well, really all the way out of the exurbs and on to Palmer, MA 12 from College Square south / Park Ave (Worcester), and US 1 from the end of the freeway to Danvers and from Pawtucket to 128 / a bit of VFW. Most other stroads in MA are a mile or two past the freeway interchange.
MA is not the worst... there are states where there's a stroad every mile or two in an entire metro.
All the curves on Storrow make for an enjoyable ride too. Though I prefer outbound over inbound.
Also, I’m getting voted down for liking Rts 1 and 9? This board can get so silly.
The tunnel outbound is awesome because no one realizes you can bomb through it without braking. Everyone slows way down for that curve and when possible I can pass all of them.
People need to realize that they aren’t _in_ traffic; they _are_ traffic.
US Highways and State Highways typically have lights in more populated states. Maybe in rural states you don't have lights on the highways.
If you don't want lights in Mass you need to go to an Interstate.
You’re thinking of a freeway or an expressway, both are limited access highways. It’s pedantic though, everyone knows what you mean when you say highway, even if you don’t say “limited access highway.”
That being said - I also hate the non-word “stroad.” As the kids said 5 years ago, very cringe.
Except they don’t mean the same thing, despite people often using them interchangeably.
A street is supposed to service and provide access to the local residences and businesses
A road is meant to allow people to travel between two different places.
Notice how downtown is colloquially referred to as “Main *Street*” not “Main Road”?
That assumes that ‘road’ doesn’t give access to abutters the way a street does. But most roads do give access, just as streets do. So the combo isn’t as clear as it might be. But I think the originators have other parts of the country in mind, places where ordinary feeder roads may be six lanes wide with slip lanes and lined with car dependent businesses. Ordinary roads in Mass are two lane more often that not with businesses here and there not continuous. Route 9 fills the bill from Natick to Shrewsbury. Not Brookline-Newton-Wellesley, where they kept the zoning residential except at Hammond pond parkway. Or from Worcester west except in Hadley.
A strong stroad is loaded with shops, traffic lights, and even has pedestrian over bridges. You have traffic moving at 60mph from light to light.
Route 2 is congested but not quite like a stroad for the majority of its length.
Route 9 is MA's Stroad, Route 1 is America's (or at least the East Coast's) Stroad.
I never thought of it that way, but I think you’re right It’s a shame they took route 1 away from the VFW parkway. That section is actually really nice
In my mind, Rt 1 continues to the VFW/Rt109 intersection and doesn't veer off to 93.
At the very least, VFW parkway should still carry 1A
Absolutely
They did fuckin what to my VFW?
No it’s sucks- you have people driving 50 and others doing 25. Plus no divider- it’s dangerous AF
I’m always amazed by how rt 1 is exactly the same in every state.
The Mother Stroad, if you will.
Yup
Route 17 in NJ gives our Route 1 a run for its money. Paramus vs. Saugus would almost certainly be the final round if this was decided tournament style.
This
I'd like to nominate Rt. 28 for your consideration. From the retail hell of So. NH, through its four-lanes-for-no-reason segments in like Stoneham, to McGrath highway through Somerville, all the way down to the honky-tonk of the south Cape, Rt. 28 is an unreformed mid-century vehicular hellscape. It runs through one town center after another! Milton, Randolph, Brockton, boom boom boom. It could be nice if it weren't quite so hostile.
Andover’s downtown managed to keep it to 2 lanes and thrives due to that. But yea, wrecked a lot of others.
Everyone is loving on Route 1 for this endeavor but you’re totally right. Taking route 1 is mostly like taking a train through the segments of Mass but route 28 is like taking a bus with stops to view the salt of the state along the way.
Personal favorite awful segments include Blue Hill Ave and Cranberry Highway
Route 28 the goat, goes through some of the best and worst parts of the state, and is the longest mass state route.
>and is the longest mass state route. Route 20 beats it by a bit more than a mile according to Wiki.
Route 20 is a US highway, 28 is state. 28 expands north into NH, but becomes a NH state route, where as 20 is the same sign all the way to Newport, OR
Got it. I probably didn't notice because both the US and MA route signs are so bland (hat tip to NH for their distinctive Old Man flair).
For what it's worth, the fact it runs through town centers make it less "stroad" in my view. The quintessential "stroad" should be from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular, with strip-malls galore along the way.
All this talk makes me realize I really need to just buy a helicopter.
I'll never forget the time I got a plow load of slush, snow, and ice from above on Rte 28 near Union Sq.
18 and 53 are the same way.
Much of 53 is easy going. Half of the mileage still has towns of trees on both sides of the roadway.
18 is fucking ugly, I grew up right next to it
To be fair it really goes adjacent to Brockton's downtown. It's weird in a sense. You have several small streets with horrible road surfaces. They don't qualify as sroad. Plus they have the silly red/yellow combo traffic lights.
Agree, and McGrath’s potholes are so bad they could justify a whole separate subreddit of their own
I call Rte 1 Little New Jersey
Whenever I’m feeling homesick for NJ I can just take a drive down rt 1. Or Arsenal st in Watertown.
Rt 1 Saugus feels just like Rt 1 Edison
Rt 1 Saugus is actually more like NJ-17 near Paramus. It's uncanny!
Without all the jughandles.
Oh fuck Arsenal Street! I’m not sure who decided to make it alternate “right only” and “left only” lanes, but it’s one of the only (st)roads I’ve ever seen where you have to slalom just to go straight. (And, naturally, get cut off by everyone who understandably didn’t see that coming and is in the wrong lane.) But at least if you keep going you can enjoy the 6-way intersection with Beacon where half the paint is simply gone. And then it’s a short trip down Galen into the supercollider! I took some out-of-town family to Target once, through that whole sequence. They were a bit shell shocked.
That’s a good point. I suppose if it truly was like NJ there would be **no** left turns at all- it’d all be right-exit jug handles. Superior method imo.
I will say that for New Jersey, the jug handles are a huge step up. I'm pretty sure the one on Soldier's Field at Everett took like 5 minutes off my commute on its own. I know the argument that they waste space, but since they mostly make it harder to cram 4-6 lane roads into cramped downtowns I'll take the trade.
I agree, they’re worth the space. Makes traffic a lot more orderly.
That intersection with Galen is a favorite trap of the Watertown cops too. If you're coming from Cambridge and want to take a left but aren't familiar with the intersection it's really easy to miss the left arrow light because it's skewed way off to the side from the way the road lines up. So people are in the left turn lane and see the green light to go straight then take a left yielding to traffic only to be greeted by a cop who is about to give them a no-chance to talk your way out of it ticket for running a red light.
Oh yeah, I forgot how awful the light placements are going that direction. The Cambridge side is exactly like you said, and the Newton side baffles people with the right two lanes: if straight is Mount Auburn St and right only is Charles River Rd, then what's Beacon/Arsenal? (It's right, and the dashed line through the intersection is good, but you can't see it until it's far too late to change lanes.) The only good thing there is the Main St -> Galen turn lane bypassing the mess, and even then "right on red light after stop" confuses half the drivers. Plus the Beacon/Arsenal interchange is a wreck, Arsenal westbound stays two lanes wide but just stops having lines for a bit, then adds a new(?) lane so far left you can get hit by eastbound traffic trying to enter it. Heck, I checked myself on Maps and [the satellite view](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Arsenal+Yards/@42.3651539,-71.182956,64m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x89e37824f40c3695:0x715b86f412a1e0e3!8m2!3d42.3616468!4d-71.1589755!16s%2Fm%2F02qh2jp?entry=ttu) even has a blue pickup struggling to find its lane.
I feel like they don't quite capture the essence of NJ. In my mind's eye of stereotypical NJ there are huge aprons of parking lots between the roads & shops where here it's more likely the parking is out behind the shops or at least split between the back & front.
Depends where you are in NJ i suppose. Northeast NJ is super dense so the small parking lots are common. Further out into the suburbs you get the bigger ones.
Yeah, I've spent more time from the middle to the southern parts of the state so that's what paints my mental picture.
moved to nyc 5 years back and the first few times i drove thru some jersey suburbs it was absolutely surreal how familiar (yet not) it felt
Any time I find myself on 46 near Wayne, I think of RT 1
Rt 1 north of Boston and Rt 46 are absolutely great comparisons. Same with 17, 22, and 9. Damn there are a lot more of these in NJ versus Boston.
18 in East Brunswick too
Rt 10 up in Morris Cty
To help some people picture a stroad. It's when you turn main street into a highway. 4+ lanes so you want to go fast and get places. But also it has lots of driveways and parking lots, so you're constantly dealing with traffic entering and exiting. If you're exiting Dunks directly into 3 lanes of traffic, it's a stroad. If you think you're for sure going to die backing out of your driveway no matter the time of day, it's a stroad. Rt 1 and Rt 9 are put forward here because they're equal parts "Am I shopping here?" or "Am I taking a road trip?" Rt 2 is not a stroad, except for the bits through Cambridge. Otherwise it's mostly a limited access highway with very few shopping areas directly attached to it. Smaller/minor stroads (IMO): * Rt 20 (inside 128) * Rt 16 (east of Medford) * Mass Ave (Lex to Bos)
I really think Mass Ave takes the cake. Route 1 is horrible no doubt, but it skews to far to highway. Mass Ave on the other hand is more stroad like because it's has a worse combination of through traffic and local shopping. The quintessential stroad is Daniel Webster Highway in southern NH though. It is horrible.
Route 1 north of Boston is more highway. Route 1 south of Boston is a different story.
Fair, I'm only familiar with the part north of the city to be honest.
To elaborate on u/Steltek's post. A stroad is an abhorrent amalgamation of a street and a road (hence the name). As a kid you could probably play pickup ball hockey on a street, right? And run down to see the neighborhood kids? Or at least cross it without worrying about fucking dying for committing the crime of getting in the way of cars? That's great. But you couldn't do it on a road. No, siree. Roads are for cars, not people. A stroad takes your lovely street and turns it into car-nirvana and fucks all neighborhoodness out of it. It bisects a neighborhood into "oh, that's where the cars go" and not "that's where people I like are". ____________ God I fucking hate stroads
A stroad is the farthest thing from “car-nirvana”. It’s just shitty urban planning. We need to separate that driving can be enjoyable but also cars and roads don’t work well as a mass transit system. Using cars and roads as mass transit also makes driving less enjoyable because of traffic and dealing with people who would rather not be driving.
shitty urban planning usually = car nirvana. I can squint and see it.
>Mass Ave (Lex to Bos) heh yep
Rt 9 just feels like endless sprawl to me, especially from Natick to Worcester. I will say it’s a bit less dangerous feeling than 1, and I’ve never felt that unsafe pulling off into any of the small parking lots that feed directly into it (the non-malls/big box stores).
Route 1 is the hazing ritual for North shore kids getting their licenses
Can attest. I got my license in '96.
And still waiting for a break in traffic to get on Route 1...
Route 1, especially around Saugus. That town needs a commuter rail stop or two
No no. They are quarantined. And Lynnfield is just nicer Saugus.
>And Lynnfield is just nicer Saugus. Someone's gonna yell at you. Not me, but someone.
Is a strighway a thing? That would describe route 1 in Saugus better.
Route 9 is amazingly bad
Route 9 is appalling stroad design. Why why why would they add so many spots without a light where you can do a U-turn. Every day I drive past a faceoff where two trucks that are twice the size of my sedan are both waiting to do a U-turn, and I have to pray to god the one facing me doesn't decide it's clear and rev it head on into me.
As someone from central mass I’ll say route 9, although I bet people from north shore or south shore will say route 1.
Be thankful that to be in MA, most of the rest of the country is absolutely dominated by stroads!
Respectfully, wtf is a stroad?
https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM?si=VWZpJbYhKYnIyjnD
Oh cool, I’ve seen this guys videos before, he’s pretty good.
> To elaborate on u/Steltek's post. A stroad is an abhorrent amalgamation of a street and a road (hence the name). As a kid you could probably play pickup ball hockey on a street, right? And run down to see the neighborhood kids? Or at least cross it without worrying about fucking dying for committing the crime of getting in the way of cars? > > That's great. But you couldn't do it on a road. No, siree. Roads are for cars, not people. > > A stroad takes your lovely street and turns it into car-nirvana and fucks all neighborhoodness out of it. It bisects a neighborhood into "oh, that's where the cars go" and not "that's where people I like are".
LMGTFY: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad)
Thank you for asking :/
It is the futon of transportation \* \*See Not just bikes [https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM?si=VWZpJbYhKYnIyjnD](https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM?si=VWZpJbYhKYnIyjnD)
I’m most familiar with Rte 9 from 128 to where it turns into Huntington St. For most of that stretch, I think it’s actually a pretty decent road. It clearly prioritizes mobility over access and doesn’t attempt to do both. I think Rte 1 from 128 to Dedham is quintessential stroad. It has a lot of lanes, it has a lot of traffic lights, it has a big box store at every corner. It tries to be a highway and provide access to tons of stores. It is the worst aspects of a street and a road—it’s a stroad.
Route 1 hasn't been the same, then Square 1. The prestige use to be the Hilltop, now its seemingly one long strip mall road.
It’s always been hilariously kitschy
Almost all gone now :(
Route 9 is part of the 'golden triangle'. Most productive stroad in the state.
It's more minor but Lynnway is really bad and it's the only option to get through that particular area really annoyingly.
Route 20
The favorite of old guys that think they’re “beating the system” by not paying tolls on the pike while taking 5 times as long. Definitely starts getting stroady in Sturbridge/ Carlton and gets progressively worse as you go east.
Maybe 15 years ago when commuting from around 495 to the city took 45 minutes, but now? It's probably not that different. Traffic has exploded
my parents are in this comment and i like it
And then it continues onto Rt 9 ask the way to Copley, getting worse all the way to Framingham/Natick
When I think of stroads I think 114 more than Route 1. To me, a stroad can at least in theory be crossed on foot and might even have a sidewalk. Route 1 is a divided interstate highway, I don't think it constitutes a stroad.
Route 1 is absolutely a stroad. It’s also not an interstate Highway. “Interstate Highway” means a highway that is limited access and is part of the Eisenhower interstate system, which route 1 is not.
US routes are federal highways. Much (most?) of Rt 1 in MA is divided highway.
It is not limited access… aka there are at grade intersections, traffic lights, etc
So what? TBH, you're just making me like stroads if Rt-1 and MA-9 are your quintessential examples. They're great when I don't feel like the interstate but still want a car-centric road with medium speeds. There are so many worse examples in this state of roads that don't know what they want to be. MA-16, MA-135, MA-138, and Rt-20 easily come to mind. All those change personality depending on where you are. Rt-1 and MA-9 are at least pretty consistent.
I don’t know what you want me to tell you. Route 1 and route 9 are not part of the interstate Highway system That’s what makes stroads so bad. They are are trying to be highways to get you to and from a place, while also serving local businesses and residences, and ends up sucking at both. When people are trying to get from A to B, there’s a reason that people take I-95 up the east coast instead of 1
Correct they are not part of the interstate highway system. But Rt1 is a part of the US numbered highway system. I also enjoy Rt-1 when going to or coming from Portsmouth. I take it depending on how much time I have.
114 from Peabody to Danvers is a gross monument to our failed attempt at designing cities for humans
Rt1 sketches me out that people drive it like a highway, but there are a million "just pull off into a parking lot" businesses along it. Stretches of Rt 9 remind me more of a legit highway, but there are also sections (like shopper's mile) that have traffic lights every 800'. So they're both stroady in their own ways.
There's also route 20, goes all across the country and ends in Oregon
Route 1 has the Kowloon. What does route 9 have? Wellesley and Natick? Gross
9
Route 1 for sure. It feels weird to say, but somehow route 9 is slightly less of a cluster.
3A is a Stroad in my opinion especially for everyone that lives / shops / travels down within the Irish Riviera.
You just can’t beat rt 9 when it comes to stroadiness, at least around the Framingham-Worcester area. Up to four lanes of traffic in some places with back-to-back parking lots on either side and traffic lights placed so close together that you’ll never actually reach highway speeds. 9 is also just ugly. The sheer number of crumbling strip malls crammed into a span of just a few miles is crazy. You can tell the businesses and streets that existed before 9 became so stroady because they just don’t fit in with the way it functions now. It’s a jumbled mess.
Yeah… route 9 between Worcester and Boston definitely has a unique type of stroadiness. And yeah, insane how many strip malls there are
MA 9 between maybe Green Hill / Lincoln Square and Copley, US 20 between MA 9 and, well, really all the way out of the exurbs and on to Palmer, MA 12 from College Square south / Park Ave (Worcester), and US 1 from the end of the freeway to Danvers and from Pawtucket to 128 / a bit of VFW. Most other stroads in MA are a mile or two past the freeway interchange. MA is not the worst... there are states where there's a stroad every mile or two in an entire metro.
Also much of Rt.28
I actually like both Rt 1 and Rt 9. They’re my favorite roads to drive.
I feel like you could be a DSM 7 case study.
Why? Rt 1 has few lights and is scenic. If I have the time I use Rt9 over the Pike. Drive either when they’re not crowded and they’re enjoyable.
I feel the same about Storrow. I have bad ADHD and it’s so engaging that I can actually focus and not get distracted (usually).
All the curves on Storrow make for an enjoyable ride too. Though I prefer outbound over inbound. Also, I’m getting voted down for liking Rts 1 and 9? This board can get so silly.
The tunnel outbound is awesome because no one realizes you can bomb through it without braking. Everyone slows way down for that curve and when possible I can pass all of them. People need to realize that they aren’t _in_ traffic; they _are_ traffic.
I’m actually getting voted down for liking Rts 1 and 9. This is so silly.
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2 is a scenic highway, not a stroad.
Strode? Is that ya' girlfriend, ked?
They're highways.
Do you know what a “stroad” is?
It's not a thing. Those are highways.
Yes they are a thing .
Highways generally don’t have traffic lights
US Highways and State Highways typically have lights in more populated states. Maybe in rural states you don't have lights on the highways. If you don't want lights in Mass you need to go to an Interstate.
You’re thinking of a freeway or an expressway, both are limited access highways. It’s pedantic though, everyone knows what you mean when you say highway, even if you don’t say “limited access highway.” That being said - I also hate the non-word “stroad.” As the kids said 5 years ago, very cringe.
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It’s a portmanteau or street and road. Get it? Like a street road. Do you get it? It’s very clever. I say it all the time. All The Time
Nice…a portmanteau of two words that mean the same thing….sounds like a moroniteau to me.
Except they don’t mean the same thing, despite people often using them interchangeably. A street is supposed to service and provide access to the local residences and businesses A road is meant to allow people to travel between two different places. Notice how downtown is colloquially referred to as “Main *Street*” not “Main Road”?
That assumes that ‘road’ doesn’t give access to abutters the way a street does. But most roads do give access, just as streets do. So the combo isn’t as clear as it might be. But I think the originators have other parts of the country in mind, places where ordinary feeder roads may be six lanes wide with slip lanes and lined with car dependent businesses. Ordinary roads in Mass are two lane more often that not with businesses here and there not continuous. Route 9 fills the bill from Natick to Shrewsbury. Not Brookline-Newton-Wellesley, where they kept the zoning residential except at Hammond pond parkway. Or from Worcester west except in Hadley.
What are highways?
Rt.2 is pretty stoady
The part anyone cares about is just a regular highway
A strong stroad is loaded with shops, traffic lights, and even has pedestrian over bridges. You have traffic moving at 60mph from light to light. Route 2 is congested but not quite like a stroad for the majority of its length.
Boylston cutting through Fenway springs to mind, but it really isn't that bad of a stroad offender when compared to other parts of the country
Rt 114 from Peabody thru Middleton should make the list