tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30400278.post218963917678657691..comments2010-02-08T11:02:17.159-05:00Comments on The Gross Report: Non-Grid Transportation NetworksStephen Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08704949337738506028noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30400278.post-4846158219347063422007-07-04T11:51:00.000-05:002007-07-04T11:51:00.000-05:00Oh man! I can't believe you didn't mention Salt La...Oh man! I can't believe you didn't mention Salt Lake City... and the Salt Lake City pattern is almost universally followed throughout Utah and other parts of the Mormon inter-mountain West.<BR/><BR/>It's a simple pattern:<BR/><BR/>The grid is rigid and (in Salt Lake County) county-wide, with streets running north-south and east-west. The square blocks are each 10 acres (appx 660 feet on a side — 8 blocks to a mile... though this varies outside of Salt Lake county).<BR/><BR/>The streets are named for their distance from the 0-point. In Salt Lake, the 0-point is the intersection of South Temple and Main. South Temple runs east-west and Main runs north-south. So we have streets 100 South, 200 South... and so on, down across city boundaries to the south end of the valley at 146000 South. Streets are named the same going east-west. There are streets that have conventional names, but always, parenthetically, have their grid designation (Hawthorne Ave is 550 South).<BR/><BR/>The kicker in all of this, though — and what really sets this all apart from the grids mentioned in the post (at least as far as I can tell) — are the addresses:<BR/><BR/>Say my address is 336 West 300 South. That means my home is located about a third of the way along the block between 300 West and 400 West... or, in the local parlance, I live on Third South between Third and Fourth West. And this works anywhere in the city... 240 South Main Street is half-way between 2nd and 3rd South on Main Street.<BR/><BR/>And this is so helpful... In NYC, if you've got the cross-streets, you know exactly where it is. But if you don't know the cross-streets, you're out of luck, because 550 X street and 550 Y street are seldom related to each other.<BR/><BR/>In Salt Lake, however, the address is the cross-street.<BR/><BR/>Of course, there are exceptions... most notable among them being <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avenues%2C_Salt_Lake_City%2C_Utah" REL="nofollow">The Avenues neighborhood</A>.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, it's wonderful... and a breeze to navigate — though folks from back-East have to be reminded that SLC blocks are up to three-times as long as they're used to.<BR/><BR/>:)Silus Grokhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10934750518150584644noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30400278.post-91968442811174870072007-07-03T21:52:00.000-05:002007-07-03T21:52:00.000-05:00Chicago, even outside of the Loop, has an excellen...Chicago, even outside of the Loop, has an excellent grid system. Don't let the diagonal streets (Elston, Clybourn, Lincoln, Archer, etc) fool you.<BR/><BR/>Even though all of the streets and avenues are named, not numbered (at least on the north side - south side streets do have numbers) the numbering convention used makes a lot of sense.. north/south from Madison and east/west from State, minor streets at 100 intervals, major streets at 400 intervals; 800 per mile (8 blocks north/south, 16 blocks east/west due to rectangular blocks vs squares.)<BR/><BR/>I moved here in 2003 and could find my way around within a couple of months. Directions are given by major intersections ("that's close to Peterson and California") which is generally all that's needed to know exactly where to go...Bryenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15402702142989882012noreply@blogger.com