Best cars for Davis-area roads?

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

My car is approaching end-of-life, and I'm wondering if there's a car made that actually feels comfortable to drive on the roads around here. I'm getting a -very- harsh ride on the roads in and out of Davis and its a little embarassing when picking somebody up to visit. Trying to avoid that with the next car.

The OB-Davis content: We all drive on the same unevenly patched roads in and out of Davis, so when somebody says they can drive Mass Ave or Boston Ave and not feel a thing, that's a strong recommendation.

Comments

[ifotismeni]

yes, it's possible to bike to chelmsford. my parents live there and i bike there many times -- on the weekends, when i have 2 hours to spare, and when i don't mind killing myself on the hills.

i reverse commuted from davis (and now east arlington) both to waltham and now to burlington -- the worst part of it is always leaving the cambridge/arlington area, the highways are nice and clear.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of boneheadism and nimbyism in the design of the Alewife interchange as well as the Lake St Arlington vs. bike path intersection. Too many left turns and random pedestrian darting backs up the latter.

But the accident du jour on 128 is no picnic either. They should really bring back Puritan-era consequences for the people who cause them. Such as putting a set of "stocks" by the side of the road so we can shout curses at them as we crawl by.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Personally I think you could punish people with the death penalty for car accidents and they would still cause them. Oh wait (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/deaths.htm)! (Car accidents being the number 5 killer of Americans overall and the number 1 killer of children ages 4 to 14)

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

as someone who's driven down Lake Street in rush hour nearly every day for the past 5 years, i can say with some assurance that the two main reasons for the horrific backups in that area are all the "no turn" signs that the oh-so-persnickety folks living in the neighborhoods near Lake Street had installed, and the bike path.

if *all* the traffic that used lake street wasn't forced into this one unnatural channel, then forced to stop every 15 seconds, it would flow a lot faster.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Wouldnt the "no turn" signs make little difference to traffic passing through, because except for a little street that goes along Spy Pond, everything between the pond and Alewife Brook that crosses the bike path, side streets included, is funneled through one point?

Or did there used to be more crossings in the side streets?

A walk/dont walk signal during rush-hour traffic would improve the situation immensely, provided the pedestrians can be persuaded to wait their turn.