And then I think about when I was a kid, in Seattle, and I walked 2 miles each way to my school. (I didn’t go to my neighborhood school, which was a block away from home, and didn’t qualify for a school bus. Because my house was on a hill and the school was on a hill too, with a valley in the middle, I got to walk to school uphill both ways, too.) ;) I was 10. This was not considered all that abnormal for a 10-year-old. But kids now, because of parental fears, don’t get to walk like that. And as adults, so many people just immediately jump in the car — and as the kids raised by overprotective parents grow up, they won’t have the habit of walking anywhere. I had the habit already, and I still lost it when I got a car. I admit I jump in the car more than I should. But since returning from London, I have tried to walk more, and have felt good about the amount I’ve done so far — still nowhere near enough — and for me, the train is an excuse to walk even more. There are actually a lot of places I regularly go to by car now that are near the light rail line.

The only thing that concerns me is not the walking distance to places I need to go, it’s safety. When I leave work at 10pm or so, I would have to get from the north waterfront to Westlake to catch the train. The distance isn’t so much the concern for me as being a small female walking alone through Belltown after dark. Oh, how I wish the Waterfront streetcar was running, and would run as late as the trains… because it’s a direct connection for folks working in the Waterfront area, to the light rail at the International District. (Another reason to bring it back.)

There are more posts now. We have worked our way north to the Columbia City Station.

But there is no way we are going to get much further before tomorrow. If we are very, very lucky we will have an article about Mount Baker and one about Beacon Hill. I wanted to cover every station in the system, but we ran out of time. Oops.

How would the WalkScore folks rank a mcmansion on cul-de-sac in an eastside gated community? “really, really car dependent”?

And of what value is the proximity of a gas station in a neighborhood walkability ranking?

Many people do consider a mile to be walking distance. It’s a 20-minute walk for a healthy person. And yes, we need a change in those who do not view it that way. Such attitudes contribute to urban and transit planning problems as well as the obesity epidemic.

I’m afraid the Walk Score folks are right on this one — even young, healthy, fit Americans don’t generally consider a mile to be walking distance. Throw in arthritis, obesity, or diseases of a sedentary lifestyle, and many people have great difficulty walking more than a few blocks.

That may change with time, but for now, you can’t simply tell people that a mile is walking distance and expect them to take you seriously.

1. Don’t expect high-frequency non-peak hour trips anytime soon. The ST person gave a simple if prohibitive response: ST doesn’t own the track, and the real owners, BNSF, aren’t exactly the friendliest people at the table. Full commuter rail service (a la NY’s MNRR/LIRR or Chicago’s Metra) will essentially require purchase and construction of ST’s own right-of-way should BNSF’s current position remain. He added that it was hard enough already to run the weekend event trains.

2. BNSF is dragging their heels on track upgrades in south Seattle, but they’re almost finished (if not already). It’ll speed things up through that crawl.

3. More good news: once the D-to-M St track is complete and service to Lakewood begins, Amtrak will switch from its current location to Freighthouse Sq to bypass the Pt. Defiance tunnel. Obviously, this is great on a number of levels: more foot traffic for businesses in the Dome district and (especially important) Amtrak passengers will have direct access to/from downtown Tacoma via T-Link.

But yeah, Sound Move just couldn’t pass without Sounder North. It’s effectively part of the cost of building Link. ;)

It’ll be a long time, of course. The four round trips in ST2 will help, but we’ll need more like 20 new round trips to change travel patterns enough that all-day, regular transit to the stations starts being feasible.

I realize this is way more “old school” that gaining all of your life information through blogs, tweets and telepathic waves, but did you bother to pick up a phone and call the transit system and ask?

For what it is worth the park & ride lots in Portland along MAX don’t start until well away from the city core. The closest P&R to the North is Delta Park, to the East is Gateway, and to the West is Sunset, each of these is around 5 to 5.5 miles from the Portland Downtown core.

The equivalent distance on Link is about the Othello or Rainier Beach stations. For North Link the Roosevelt or Northgate stations (Roosevelt has a P&R nearby at Ravenna/NE 65th & I-5).

http://beaconhill.seattle.wa.us/2009/07/15/going-places-on-light-rail-tukwila-and-rainier-beach-stations/

(Oops, the URL mentions Rainier Beach but we actually separated that into its own post and forgot to change the URL.)