My personal least favorite is the intersection of Causeway, Commercial, and North Washington at the base of the bridge to Charlestown. It simply cannot be crossed easily as a pedestrian. Basically, there is a steady stream of trucks coming across the bridge and turning right onto Causeway. No matter what the light says, they just don’t stop. Ever.
I’d like to see what it would be like if the old Haymarket intersection was still around. Washington/North Washington Street, Merrimac Street, Cross Street, Sudbury Street, Haverhill Street, Union Street, Blackstone Street, and Canal Street all converging in one area.
As for the Washington Street thing, I have a copy of a map from 1722 showing Summer and Winter Streets with the same names they have now. But there is certainly a tendency for streets to change names when crossing it. I think the Worcester Street/Worcester Square one is even more confusing. Several streets keep the same names when crossing Washington, though. Examples would be Mass. Ave., Melnea Cass, East Berkeley and Herald (and to be even more confusing, the last two change names when they cross Tremont two blocks from Washington).
Also annoying is streets that follow unpredictable paths, such as Tremont and Commercial.
And there’s the sheer hell of Atlantic Ave., Purchase St., and Surface Rd. in the vicinity of the Big Dig. Especially Dewey Square at rush hour when seventy million people are trying to walk to South Station at the same time another seventy million are trying to drive through the same spot. And as mentioned, it never seems to be the same configuration of roads for more than a month. Also, sections of roads are paved not with smooth asphalt, but with concrete slabs with large seams between them. Also, the areas that are asphalt occasionally get sinkholes where you can probably see the Big Dig workers underground.
And of course there’s the one way streets downtown that make navigation impossible for the unintiiated. Example: Toget from the corner of Washington Street and Temple Place to the One Beacon Street loading dock by car, you need to take Temple to Tremont, head away from One Beacon three blocks, take a left onto Boylston, which then becomes Essex when you cross Washington, turn left onto Chauncy, which becomes Arch when it crosses Summer, then turn left onto Franklin, then right onto Washington, then left onto Court Street, left again onto Tremont again, then simply merge across four lanes and you’re there. By foot you simply walk down Tremont from Temple Place to One Beacon Street, which is about four blocks away.
And the Jamaicaway also deserves a mention for its insane narrowness. Two lanes in each direction, traffic moving at 40 mph, separated by mere inches, no shoulders, and rather twisty as well.
Lastly, Huntington Ave. has been overlooked, which ought to be addressed. Again, no shoulders, but this time there’s trolleys in the middle of the road, and the most jaded jaywalkers I’ve seen anywhere. I’ve seen people sauntering lazily across the road in the middle of the night with nary a concern for the thought that there might be cars on it. And the Ruggles Street intersection is particulary bad, as there’s several seconds between when the light turns green and when the cross traffic finally makes it out of the intersection. And that’s assuming that it isn’t one of the days the road narrows to only one lane due to construction.
It’s rather amazing that with the amount of construction going on constantly on the roads, nothing ever seems to get fixed.
Oh, and Monday’s going to be real fun, what with the Boston Marathon and the Red Sox day game.