Driving in big cities

[fandango]

Much of Barcelona is a grid system, so it's easy. But if I'm in the parts that aren't I often get lost. There's always someone to ask, though, and it's easy to navigate generally because the city is between the sea and some hills.

[Azumanga Davo]

Parkour.

Yep, he did drive that pink Rolls Royce pretty quick, didn't he?

[Vivianita]

I drive in Bogotá which is very big city and I don't get lost... I just guide myself using the adresses, it's not really that hard

[Vivianita]

Double post

[Rollo]

Sydney is not a grid but the whole city is radial.
If you have an idea of what the map of the railway network looks like, and then where the motorways go, you can pretty well much find most suburbs... but as for actual streets, you'd need a street directory.

I used to drive from home to work, a distance of 46km. Or if you will a round trip of 92km every day. Even over a distance that long, you even get an idea of which lane you need to be in to make best use of traffic flows; and where the backstreets and duck alleys go.

[Drew]

I have no idea where anywhere is or any of the road names, it's always the pink house of the house that has the ferrari...

[Vivianita]

Here in Bogotá it's quite easy to drive and not get lost because all streets are numbered and the numbers go up from South to North so, it's pretty obvious that if you're in the 19th street and you want to go to the 90th, you just have to go 71 blocks to the north... But, in those cities that have streets with names, how the hell do you know where's every street? I've always wondered that.

[Valve Bounce]

I got around in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne without any trouble. The secret is to get a tourist map of the city which shows where the different suburbs are and how they are interconnected. If you can get it all on one or two pages, it helps to get yourself orientated.

When I left Australia to work overseas, I found my way around in KL, Bankok, Seoul, Tehran, in this way. I also visited London but that was a bit more confusing. I did hire a camper van and visited Paris, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Holland and only got lost once - that was when I took a wrong turn in Norway and went in the wrong direction for 15 minutes.

I had good maps and a compass on the windscreen. If you like reading maps, then it's not a problem, even when there are one way systems like in London. My mother used to navigate my brother around London by getting her directions from the tube stations. :

[ShiftingGears]

Here in Bogotá it's quite easy to drive and not get lost because all streets are numbered and the numbers go up from South to North so, it's pretty obvious that if you're in the 19th street and you want to go to the 90th, you just have to go 71 blocks to the north... But, in those cities that have streets with names, how the hell do you know where's every street? I've always wondered that.

Street directory, landmarks, suburbs etc etc. I think its a lot more interesting than having a street grid with numbers.

[Iain]

Had to navigate my way in and out of Glasgow a little while ago there. What a joke of a road system. It's a grid pattern mostly in the centre, so you'd think it's easy to go around. But no, there are No Right Turn, No Left Turn, One Way streets and other obstacles in the way. Don't mind driving the motorway through the centre, but if I have to get off it and go through the normal streets, it's a nightmare with parked cars everywhere on the two lane roads.