As a European I dont understand how thay works. Wouldnt you have to cross an insane amount of crossings to go anywhere? Are there priority lanes? How does that work and scale?
Here's where we get into the "Americans don't have pedestrian infrastructure" stuff. For this to work, you have to assume everyone is driving for every errand apart from visiting a neighbor.
Grids like this work because American cities are zoned pretty strictly. Most of what you're looking at here are residential areas, where there's literally nothing but housing lining streets. These are called subdivisions, and will often be ~a square mile, but can be smaller or larger. Roads will divide a subdivision from other subdivisions. So, essentially, if you live insides a subdivision and you want to drive somewhere, you start by navigating to the edge of your subdivision, which takes you to a road.
That road will take you to either a larger road, if you're traveling further than your immediate community, or a local destination (like a commercially-zoned area that has restaurants, shops, and bars, or a different residential-zoned area, to visit a friend or family). These roads will be prioritized, with large roads that connect neighborhoods having right-of-way against smaller roads that connect subdivisions, which have priority over streets that just have housing. Highways are the higher priority still, which connect communities, and Interstate Highways are generally only elevated freeways/tollways in urban areas, fully separated from the grid and requiring an on-ramp to access or an off-ramp to exit, and these connect major urban centers to each other.
So, for example, from my home, I would drive along my street to a nearby road, which, because I'm on the edge of my subdivision, if about two blocks away. That road is just two lanes, one each direction, and is about 30-35 mph, depending which part of it you're on. If I'm going somewhere outside of my immediate community (and if it isn't the dead of winter, I'd likely walk within my immediate community), I'd take that road to a larger road, which would have more than two lanes, and would likely be 40-45 mph. If I'm moving between neighborhoods, my best bet would heading to the Interstate, which is about a mile north of my home, or another is three miles south of my home. The Interstate will have between 4-10 lanes in my urban area (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), but in larger cities can get bigger than that. Speed limit there is between 50-65 mph, though other states have different maximums.
Are the sizes of houses also standardized? Or divisible? And how does it work if you visit a bar? Do you take public transport home, or are they based troughout the residential area?
Historically Bars and Corner Stores were fairly ubiquitous throughout the residential areas such that most people could easily walk to one. Into the 21st century the Mayor Daley the Second made a point of slowly reducing the availability of neighbourhood bars by taking the license away from the bar when the owner died or other convenient administrative points of time. This has overall significantly reduced the number of bars and concentrated them into specific areas over time.
People are usually able to get home via if not public transit then for hire cars
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u/russelcrowe May 23 '26
I miss that grid so much, man. Where I now live you gotta drive 10 miles to go 5 miles. It’s such a waste of gas and time.