One of the challenges of our exile from New York City has been our consternation with the street grid (or lack thereof) in our new neighborhood. We’re basically one big cul-de-sac off Route 1. Furthermore, instead of a rational system of straight (and continuous) streets running along cardinal directions, we have something that resembles a model of the intestines, or a particularly complicated plumbing diagram. In short, we live in a labyrinth.
Here is Google’s map of the nabe. Except for various winding ways up to Greenbelt Rd, the few access points require you to travel on Rt. 1. Within Berwyn, Roads stop suddenly, and then the road begins again half a block on, as if houses and lawns had spilled out over the street. Rhode Island Ave makes four appearances in the Berwyn section of College Park. To get from the southernmost Rhode Island Aveneue to one of the others, you have to go back out onto Route 1. Want to visit someone on Quebec St.? Well, don’t bother turning onto Quebec St. from Rt 1. It just dead-ends. The rest of Quebec St. is farther east. Also, who decided to have a Pontiac and a Potomac Street? A Berwyn Rd and a Berwyn House Road?
Also, the map you get on Google (and all the other mapping sites that use the same set of data) is not correct. The map shows Quebec connecting with 48th Ave. It doesn’t: it stops short of an intersection. Also, notice how Potomac and Navahoe seem to be connected by a small jog of road? They aren’t. To get from the end of Potomac to the part of Navahoe 100 feet away, you have to drive back out onto Rt. 1.
I think I know why our neighborhood is like this. It discourages the area’s notoriously aggressive and boneheaded drivers from cutting through the neighborhood to bypass snarled and ugly Route 1. The end result is a traffic labyrinth. At least once a day, a motorist stops in front of our house while we’re outside and asks my wife and me for directions: “Is 9500 Rhode Island Avenue on this Rhode Island Avenue?” or “If that’s Berwyn Road, where is Berwyn House Road?” or “How in the world do I get out of here?”
Also, it takes longer to walk around the neighborhood. I don’t think the city’s planners wanted walkers either, though, since most streets don’t have sidewalks and the sidewalks that exist are overgrown in places by untrimmed trees and bushes. This from a city inside the Beltway.