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

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised no one has piped in with ZOMG why do you want to buy a car, the T is SO easy to use, and you can always bike!!!!!!

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Would this be a bad time to mention how years ago I used to drive into downtown to work, taking the commute down to 13 minutes from 40?

But seriously it's surprising how few (any?) people have mentioned a reverse-commute to work in the suburbs on this forum. Is it possible to bike to Chelmsford?

[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.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I'm guessing you're either a) not counting parking in your commute time, b) Not factoring in the cost of parking in one of the many extremely expensive garages downtown or c) someone else was paying for your parking.

As for the reverse commute: I do! I take the train from West Medford to Woburn every day and bike to work from the train station. I love this train because it is hardly ever late and it runs every hour for the entire day.

The same train also goes all the way to Lowell and the trip from there to Chelmsford Center would be a relatively short 4 mile bike ride along route 110/Chelmsford Street.

Of course, prior to the mid 1930s you could have hopped an Old Colony train directly from Lowell to Chelmsford Center, but that was discontinued almost immediately after our New Deal-era spending spree on road paving projects.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

A little bit of each. The company had its own garage, I had to pay per month to park, but it looked extremely subsidized in comparision to what some of those garages cost.

The short commute was a combination of flexible work hours ( roughly 10-7 ) with a creative use of the roads in the East Cambridge/Back Bay area, with about four redundant alternate routes.

There's a lot of interesting old rail beds in the Bedford through Lowell area which got converted to pedestrian and bike paths. There's one which I think splits off the Minuteman path, up by the VA hospital in Bedford and ends in an office park on the Bedford/Billerica/Chelmsford border, so it really is possible to cycle to Chelmsford.

But as far as the New Deal, while I usually go libertarian this would be a very good time to bring back the WPA. The infrastructure is crumbling, and people need jobs.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of interesting old rail beds in the Bedford through Lowell area which got converted to pedestrian and bike paths.

Indeed the route I mentioned above (what used to be the Lowell and Framingham Railroad) is slated to become the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail (http://www.brucefreemanrailtrail.org). Based on your geographical description it sounds like we're talking about the same thing. According to their own timetable the first phase should be finished any day now.

But as far as the New Deal, while I usually go libertarian this would be a very good time to bring back the WPA. The infrastructure is crumbling, and people need jobs.

Yeah, and this time lets do it favoring trains instead of cars, since we're spending the money anyway.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

That one's a little further west than the one I'm thinking of. In the 1800s, there was a resort area called "Bedford Springs" where Middlesex Community College is now. That and the cottages around Nutting Lake, Billerica, were a vacation spot, and people would take the train up.