To The Wharf

March 11, 2004 - Ed Gives Direction

The dedicated staff of edhat.com is going to think twice next time we need to rely upon Internet directions, especially Yahoo maps. It seems that Yahoo doesn’t know about things like all the traffic lights on State Street. Downtown there are two lights on every block, one at the intersection and one at the crosswalk in the middle. And, in case you haven’t figured it out, the lights for the crosswalk are on-demand, not timed. They will go yellow-to-red instantly when a pedestrian pushes the button. Next time you are downtown, push them and feel the power. Watch as the cars stop before you.

In most other parts of town, pushing the walk button only makes the walk light go on when the light turns green. It doesn’t make the light turn green any faster.

And there are other things to which Internet maps are oblivious. They aren’t smart enough to know which lights have long delays and which left turns require waiting. They also don’t know about tourists who weave, stop, and move slowly about the town as they take in the sights and figure out where to go. It sure is a nice view along Cabrillo Blvd (lots of palm trees), but where shall we park?

Yesterday the dedicated staff checked out driving routes between La Cumbre Plaza and Stearns Wharf. Months ago we had checked out driving routes between the Mission and Montecito. We had 4 candidates for quickest route this time – 3 suggested by different Internet mapping sites, and 1 suggested by Ed. Yahoo said go straight down State Street. Others said take the freeway. MapQuest said to exit at Garden and backtrack onto Cabrillo. Ed and MSN (Vicinity) said to get off at Castillo with Ed going left to State and MSN going right to Cabrillo.

As we all predicted, Yahoo was painfully mistaken. On our trip through downtown on State we experienced 10 red lights – not so bad if you want to check out the girls and/or boys, take in the sights, or get a close up view of restaurants panned by Louie, but not good if you are in a hurry. The total travel time was 15 minutes.

We only drove the Yahoo route once, but for the others we went twice and took an average. Lady Light Luck plays a big factor in travel time, particularly on the Castillo to Cabrillo route that goes through two potentially long lights (Castillo/Montecito and Castillo/Cabrillo).

After the driving and averaging were done, we had a clear winner. Taking Garden Street and backtracking allows you to right-on-red out of any serious intersection and steers you clear of tourists and traffic. Average travel time for this route was seven minutes and five seconds (7:05). Second place went to Ed’s Castillo/State route (7:35). Third went to Castillo/Cabrillo (7:48), which was hurt by some long lights on the second trial.

Contestants were equally split between Castillo/Cabrillo and Garden. Only 2 people picked Castillo/State, and 1 joker (you know who you are) picked straight down State. Subscriber Gretty came the closest in the tiebreaker with a guess of 7 ½ minutes. Gretty wins a prize from the edhat.com grab bag. We will email our winner with detailed directions on how to claim the prize.

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