Highway or Surface Streets?
Later this week I’m meeting a friend and her immediate family at a restaurant on Olive in the suburb of Creve Coeur. I’ve never been to this place before but I knew approximately where it was. I used the directions feature on their website to see how it suggests I get from my downtown loft to the location.
It used Yahoo Maps which must have realized I-64/Hwy 40 is closed for reconstruction as it directed me up to I-70 to I-170 to Olive — a long route I never would have come up with on my own. It indicated the route was 20.51 miiles and would take 33 minutes. Twenty miles! To many of you 20 miles might not be a big deal but I tend to think more in terms of 20 blocks, not miiles.
So I open Google Maps and input my address and the address of the restaurant. Ah, a much shorter route – 15.3 miles and 26 minutes. Granted it is one that doesn’t work because of the closed highway. But Google Maps has an option to “avoid highways” which I then checked. This gave me the most direct route with the least distance (14.3 miles) but the greatest travel time (34 minutes) – using normal surface streets.
One of the three isn’t an option due to the closed highway so that leaves two choices. One at 20.51 miles/33 minutes and one at 14.3 miles/34 minutes. The highway option saves me a minute but is over 40% longer distance. My gas mileage would be greater by using highway rather than city streets  Based on 35mpg highway & 25 mpg city, though, the surface street route is a wash (0.586 gallons highway vs. 0.572 gallons surface, each way). But one adds many more miles to my car. My Carolla, which I bought used in July, has over 100,000 miles already — I don’t want to rack up too many miles to quickly. One could argue that the stopping & going on surface streets invites more wear on the vehicle than just cruising down the highway.
With surface streets I have numerous choices — I could take different streets there vs. coming back home. I can see more interesting things along the drive rather than just billboards from the interstate. I could possibly also take care of some errands along the surface street routes which is not an option for the longer highway route.
Here are the maps from all three routes:
I will end up taking a direct surface street route. I may take Forest Park Parkway to I-170 to get to Olive but Delmar to Skinker to Olive is also a good option.
I’d like to see auto insurance rates be based on the number of miles driven — the less miles the less your bill is. Ditto for vehicle plate renewal. This would help incentivize a reduction in total miles driven. Accidents may be more frequent on surface streets but interstate accidents are far more serious.
One thing is certain, with a good network of surface streets we have numerous route options and the miles driven may be less and the time spent not significantly more. Next time you use Google Maps think about checking the “avoid highways” option or even using it to map out a walking route.
When the western end of the highway was closed, it didn’t really impact my daily life very much. I had to drive down Ladue to get to West County clients, my mom’s house, and the Husband’s office, but my traffic patterns weren’t affected.
This closure has. It took me 20 minutes to get from Clayton to Wash U the other day at 5:30 p.m.–a not-so-quick quick errand. Kingshighway, Forest Park Parkway, Vandeventer–all streets I use regularly–have much higher traffic I haven’t figured out the timing for yet. This is really a curiosity to me because there are so many parallel routes.
So far as the car insurance, call your agent–we keep all but one of our cars on a lower mileage option that has decreased our costs significantly.
Paying tax by the mile is being suggested throughout the transportation industry as a means to replace the gas tax and adequately fund what we have built. The technology is certainly within grasp and its probably as close as a true usage fee that you will ever get.
I wish I had as much free time as you seem to.
I think Progressive offers mileage based insurance. Basically a memory stick is plugged into your car’s computer and the info downloaded periodically. Some programs also allow the insurance company to record excessive speeds and hard braking which up the rates.
“I wish I had as much free time as you seem to.”
You might free some time up by reading/commenting on fewer blogs.
I have AIG, and I know they asked me how long my commute is. Don’t know if it actually results in savings or not.
I prefer street surface traveling, always have. There’s so much more to see and observe. It’s how you truly get to know a city.
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Talked with quite a few people who discovered whole new sectors of the city once 40 shut down, and they consider that a positive. This is the land of Lewis & clark, so glad more people are exploring.
I live over there, which restaurant were you going to? Please state that!
I’d take the surface streets, but Big Bend, not Skinker, between FPP and Delmar, so you avoid the Loop.
I think Big Bend is a great street for getting north/south in the central inner suburbs. Especially without the big box store mess. Having an I-64 intechange as well as the Forest Park Parkway intersection is icing on the cake. I take it over Brentwood, Hanley, and Skinker any day.
The one thing that I wish you would see more of is round abouts for some of the busier intersections. How about a Brentwood & Clayton roundabout. How about a Hanley and Manchester round about. Just a thought.
Ahhhh, no rounadabouts!!! Have any of you lived in cities with roundabouts? They don’t work, period. No one signals correctly when they leave the roundabout (you’re supposed to put on your right turn signal) so everyone is left wondering if you’re continuing around the roundabout or exiting it. They only work in very light traffic (doesn’t every street?). England is now ripping out its roundabouts because they take up so much room and cause huge backups.
Page Ave is a great way to go. Delmar I believe y’s off and turns into Page. I have taken that several times and find it the least frustrating drive. Just before the new shutdown I went to Olive and 141 – just over and HOUR drive! I took 40 to 170 to Olive. Nightmare! Once I got to Olive I was fine until just approaching 141. My vote is take the extra miles and leave the road rage to the highway drivers.
If only they would open up more restaurants along I-170 you wouldn’t have to drive so far. And I don’t count those at the Galleria, because who really wants to be around the galleria crowd. By galleria crowd I am referring to the people silly enough to waste as much money as is does to shop at stores like Banana Republic and the like. Its amazing when you look at a map of businesses along the highway there really isn’t much there. I guess thats what happens when they cut a giant swath of concrete through already established neigborhoods. Not to say the highway isn’t usefull to the area. I can’t imagine what hanley would be like without it. It just doesn’t seem to have your normal islands of business and eateries most highways in the area have at the exits.
And if you don’t beleive me, go to google maps and type in “restaruants” while looking ant 170. Not much comes up. McDonalds doesn’t count.
Geico gives you a discount for driving fewer miles. I don’t remember the exact discount amount now, but I listed 5,000 miles as my annual driving distance since I use Metro for most trips. I don’t know how they can check this. I suppose if you have a claim, they can look at your odometer.
I thought this was a good feature of Geico. Takes away a little of the fixed costs of owning a vehicle. I wish there was a per mile insurance rate. That would be a good incentive to drive less.
I had tried to get a mileage based rate from State Farm, but all they considered is how many miles you drove to work. If you take transit to work, or telecommute, that saves money with most insurance policies. But then there is no incentive to reduce other trips – per insurance costs.
The one big problem with charging by the mile is the Big Brother aspect of it – who wants someone monitoring where and how far you drive?!
Masked – What about all of the ethnic restaurants on Olive in the Asian area. Or St Charles Rock Road and the Mexican options. On Delmar you have Indian, Vietnamese and cupcakes at the intersection of 170 and Delmar. Maybe the options you don’t have are chains, except Chevy’s.
Uncle Sam already monitors every dollar earned but monitoring mileage is Big Brotherhood? Much better than taxing mileage would be carbon emission. Currently emissions are given a free ride which makes it easier for those who preach for green alternatives to remain in their cars and SUVs.
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Too bad the Metro Extension wasn’t built with the New 64 instead of the inferior dog-leg route to the canals of Shrewsbury. If built in line with the majority of the expressed public opinion, the train could have been taken which would allowed for an easy walk or bike ride on Ballas (you could have even visited Trader Joes on the way home)…. but it’s the Lou, so drive.
We have had to access doctors offices at both St. Johns and MO Baptist on Ballas from the So Grand area. We took 44 west to 270 to Olive when west of I170 was closed and it still looks like the easiest way to go…a bit longer perhaps but faster.
John, in regards to running Metro down the 64/40 corridor, just exactly where would you have put it? There’s no way the autocentric people of this backward thinking town would give up one inch of lane space and do you have any idea how much it would cost to get the extra space needed? Land isn’t cheap in snitzy Ladue! We’ve seen how we can get along without 64/40 in the past year, so the smart thing to do would have been to just rip out the highway completely and replace it with a new Metrolink line ONLY! Did you ever notice that there were no large trucks on the old 64/40. That was because the low overpasses would not accomodate them. So it was primarily cars commuting to and from jobs that was using it. So just replacing it with a light rail line would have accomodated all the same travelers. Just in a different mode. And enviornmentally friendly mode. It’s a shame that gas has to go to $4 a gallon just to get people to even consider an alternative to the automobile but that’s about the size of it in this town. Now that gas is cheap again people are all back to running around like a bunch of idiots with no concern about the cost at all. They only think about the cost at the pump. There are other costs. If more people would get off ther lazy butts and just walk down to the store once in awhile instead of driving, get some fresh air and exercise now and then, maybe they wouldn’t have to call in sick at work three or four times a year. Once again I will blast out this statement: PEOPLE IN ST. LOUIS DON’T KNOW HOW TO THINK REGIONALLY!! Everyone is only concerned about their own personal gain. If there’s nothing in it for them, they don’t care. That’s precisely why prop M failed. Too many people in the far flung edges of the county voted against it simple because they thought they had nothing to gain. But in actuality, they were just to narrow minded to realize they and everyone else had EVERTHING to gain.