Sandy Blvd as legacy code: urban complexity mirrors software debt

In a LessWrong post, Adam Zerner dissects the intersection of SE Ankeny and Sandy in Portland, Oregon — a diagonal road (Sandy Blvd) that cuts through the regular street grid, creating a dangerous six-way intersection. Despite cyclists hating it, an advocate called it 'world class' given the constraints: high-speed traffic, weird sightlines, long crossing distances, and a history of deadly crashes (designated a High Crash Corridor by Portland). Zerner's instinct is to simplify — press a button to remove Sandy — but acknowledges it's a legacy artifact (originally a Native American trail) that's now coupled with the entire city.

He compares this to software developers inheriting legacy code with awkward architecture: it was fine at first but becomes impossible to refactor later. Zerner notes that early 1900s planners could have ditched Sandy before the grid solidified, just as devs in the growth phase should tear out poor design before it's too late. But short-term incentives (speed, political feasibility) often win. He questions whether long-term costs outweigh the disruption and whether better incentives could prevent such complexity. The post is a meditation on tradeoffs, legacy, and the difficulty of simplifying systems — urban or digital.