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1. Too much traffic - To this day I still can't believe bumper to bumper traffic on the LA freeways late on a Sunday night.
2. One way streets and circles.
3. Parallel parking.
4. Alternate side of the street parking.
5. You have to park so far away from your destination you are afraid of being mugged, killed or verbally accosted by a crazy homeless drugged or drunk guy while you walk from your parking location to your actual destination.
6. Residents feel the same way as visitors about driving and ride dirty graffiti public transportation with a bunch of sneezing, coughing, diseased, smelly, bumping people and/or thugs.
7. You're more likely to have people without a license (none, suspended, revoked) on the road simply because there are more people living in cities.
8. Potholes the size of craters on the moon. (That's you Baltimore)
9. More pedestrians not paying attention when crossing the road sometimes in groups while I'm trying to read street signs to get where I'm going - worried about plowing into them and being shot by police. I'm not a terrorist. Honest.
10. It costs you a weeks pay and your first born son to drive over some bridge (That's you, GW Bridge). Toll takers should hand out lottery scratch offs. Winners can use their jackpots to move.
11. You become religious praying you won't have to leave your car after driving over a pothole (that's you Cross Bronx Expressway) and come back to find it stripped.
12. To get where I'm going (not in DC) on some trip, I still have to drive on the DC Beltway. Shoot me now!
However, I'll be doing all of the cursing so city people are off the hook on that.
I'd say Boston and Pittsburgh because there is seemingly no rhyme or reason for how the streets are laid out, plus the street names sometimes just change at random.
I'm not sure why Washington, DC isn't on the list. Because the city has a street grid that is intersected by avenues at odd angles, it is very had to navigate.
It's actually quite logical if one looks at a map, with a grid pattern of numbers and letters. When the alphabet letters run out the names continue alphabetically by two syllable names, then once they run out it goes by by three syllable names...also alphabetically. The streets that run diagonally as state names are cast over the grid so it's hard to truly get lost if one can reason that the grid continues around you.
Chicago is laid out in a perfect NS/EW grid with uniform spacing between blocks. The stop lights even have block numbers on them so you can tell if the numbers are going up or down. If you can't navigate your way around Chicago you're hopeless.
I grew up outside of NYC by a bit. I don't think it's really that intimidating to drive through. Manhattan in particular is set up on a grid and it's very hard to get lost. As long as you understand you're not going to get anywhere quickly, it's not super frustrating. Parking on the other hand.
Boston is far, far worse to drive in than NYC. A confusing tangle of roads at random, tons of rotaries, and many roads even lack signage. It's gotten easier now that we all have GPS, but it was absolutely horrible back in my early 20s when I was just going by printed Mapquest directions.
Boston has been the worst for me, lots of curvy roads with intersections meeting at odd angles and without consistent spacing. Atlanta freeways were nerve wracking because of the high speeds everyone is doing. DC is a bit intimidating and confusing with what seems to be an excessive amount of one-way streets and congestion always seems bad. Haven't driven in NYC. Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago don't faze me.
NYC because your fancy car will get dinged up and all the pedestrians, vans and trucks and parking is a nightmare. Not as bad on the Upper East Side but Midtown and Lower Manhattan was a nightmare, Boston is a awful as well.
There's a reason why Boston has so many votes; That's because Boston before gps was the most challenging for anyone who is new to the City or area.
Boston before the Big Dig, holy God.
Boston during the Big Dig, forget it. You'd have yourself committed.
I almost did and i live here.
Trust me on this one guys: I've traveled extensively or lived in almost every city in the US. NYC is a distant 2nd. NYC getting so many votes because it's being judged as intimidating because of it's sheer size. But there's really no call for it.
The Cross Bronx and Tri-borough seems to rattle folks....
& the Bronx is confusing.
But still not anywhere on the scale of wacky Boston hahaha.
Honorable mentions for reasonable horror imo; DC, Seattle, Miami, Atlanta, Houston and LA, all mostly due to traffic increases in recent years.
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