You are there... IN HELL

[mmcirvin]

Now that Google Maps has street-level views for the Boston area, my old post on Hell Rotaries of Massachusetts can be enjoyed in a whole new manner!

I mentioned the post the other day to a co-worker of mine, and he immediately mentioned #5 and #4 on the list as worthy of inclusion.

But this, my friends, is the portrait of a champion: Timothy J. Mahoney Circle in operation. What's that? You can't tell where anyone is going or what is supposed to be going on? Neither can the driver of any of the pictured vehicles. The comically askew DO NOT ENTER sign is a nice touch.

(Even better, the Google link seems to malfunction slightly such that the little guy icon initially gets drawn on the wrong side of the circle. Not even Google can figure this place out on the first try.)

Comments

[smashingstars.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's fun. The little guy seemed to get lost at the intersection where you can go either NE or N.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

If you follow it around the circle, at one point the Google car almost gets sideswiped by a tanker truck.

[smashingstars.livejournal.com]

There's another point where it looks like there's just a jumble of cars without direction or lines to guide them. Reminds me of urban driving scenes in 1960s European films.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That is EXACTLY WHAT IT IS.

That picture that comes up at the link actually shows the turn for the offramp that (as mentioned in my old post) goes to both 16 west and 1A south. There is, as you can see, no sign anywhere near the turn that mentions this. There are signs further back along the rotary, but their referent is not at all clear.

If you want to drive from, say, Malden to Logan Airport and back again, you have to use this ramp going in both directions. The Google car, I notice, avoided taking it at all.

[brooksmoses]

Ah, yes, I remember that. I remember driving through there in teinedreugan's shiny new Civic when I was out visiting, on my very first day of driving in Boston.

Perhaps that's why I think of most of Boston as seeming somewhat sane compared to what people say about it. A few trips in and out of the Mahoney Circle to start with and set up the right mindset, and nothing else is going to be as bad.

(I hear in the old days they also used to train Jedi by having them drive through it.)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Disappointingly (but wisely), they drove around the Powderhouse circle in Somerville when there was hardly anyone else around.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

By the way, I love the effect when the car drives through the dark space under a bridge or overpass (look at where Storrow Drive goes under the Longfellow Bridge, the former site of the REVERSE THE CURSE sign, for a fine example). The cameras temporarily switch to a much longer exposure time, so that everything blurs out and the landscape ahead and behind turns into a featureless burst of blinding white radiance.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

One not on my list, because I never thought of it as all that hellish, is Sweetser Circle in Everett (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=sweetser+circle+everett&sll=42.761444,-71.093883&sspn=0.011107,0.02562&ie=UTF8&ll=42.402802,-71.060316&spn=0.002793,0.006405&t=h&z=18&om=1&layer=c&cbll=42.40219,-71.06119&cbp=1,452.79813890883014,,0,4.832191430544611), site of a recent terrifying tanker explosion (http://wbztv.com/local/Everett.fuel.tanker.2.602987.html).

[ex-askesis860.livejournal.com]

Gah. I've never seen anything like it.