Tag Archives: walking

More about walkability

Now that's my kind of sidewalk. There's even a bench.Last week I posted a link to walkscore.com, a website that calculates the walkability of a given address based on the number of stores and other amenities within–you guessed it!–walking distance. It’s a cool site (and probably accurate in most cases), but I’m hoping it will eventually evolve to something a bit more sophisticated. The thing is, walkability is about a lot more than how many stores are in your neighborhood. For me, it’s about the safety, convenience, and general pleasantness of actually getting to them.

My house, for instance, scored an 86. I’d give it about a 75. (Note that Bus Nerd would strongly disagree with me on this. He thinks walking around here is perfectly fine.) Much as I love being so close to a library, two community centers, two parks, lots of schools, and six bus routes(!), I do not love the narrow sidewalks, speeding cars, and pedestrian-unfriendly street crossings. There are several stores nearby, but they are almost all in strip malls, and to actually get to any of them, you have to cross huge parking lots (full of speeding cars).

Not that any of that stops me. I love walking. I walk to church, to the grocery store, to the beauty shop, to the coffee shop, to the park, to the pool, to the video store, to the drug store, and–at least a couple of times a month–all the way downtown. Truth be told, I prefer walking to riding the bus. If the weather was always nice and I had all the time in the world, I’d walk everywhere I needed to go–well, within five or so miles. (Once, I talked Bus Nerd into walking all the way to Pier 55 to catch the Water Taxi, and then from Seacrest Park, where the Water Taxi dropped us off, all the way to the end of Alki to meet my brother for lunch. Oh yeah, and then back.)

But enough about me already. What do you think makes a neighborhood walkable?

How walkable is your neighborhood?

Several people sent me links to this site (thanks Robert, Elisa, and Jennifer!), and Alan Durning blogged about it: walkscore.com, a cool web tool that calculates the walkability of any address in the US.

What is Walk Score? Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.

My house (which is in the Central District) got an 86 out of 100. Not bad, though I might not score it quite so high. (The folks at walkscore.com haven’t tried to cross my very busy street without getting hit by a careless, speeding, light-running motorist.) My father-in-law, who still lives in Bus Nerd’s childhood home in Detroit, earned a decent score of 57. My best friend Laurie (mother of Zaky) got an abysmal 22. (At least they have free buses where she lives.) My brother Jeremy, the newly minted New Yorker is the hands-down winner with an impressive score of 98. (I wonder how you get 100?)

Your turn. What’s your walkability score?

A bus chick’s limits (and limitations)

To get to my office from the bus stop (or to the bus stop from my office), I have to walk a decent distance. By the correct path (which involves using the actual sidewalks the city of Redmond provides for pedestrians), it’s probably close to three quarters of a mile. But I don’t take the correct path. Like all the other 545 riders who work in my building, I take a shortcut through an empty lot that is partially paved–and partially not. This works great–except in winter, when it gets dark at 4:30, and the street-lightless evening walk requires the same headlamp I bring on my annual camping excursion to Tahoma. And except when it’s been raining a lot, and the “partially not” part turns to a sea of mud intent upon destroying the carefully maintained (and oft-repaired) shoes of any bus chick with the temerity to enter. Still, I carry the flashlights and endure the ruined shoes and stained pantlegs, all in the name of saving those few minutes that the shortcut provides.

Or at least I did.

Today, I headed home from work earlier than usual (to get back to the West Side in time for Rebecca Walker’s talk) and found myself dodging the mud puddles in the empty lot at an unfamiliar time. A time, apparently, when the actual inhabitants of the lot–geese!–enjoy their evening constitutional.

I might have mentioned my general, rather minor fear of birds. I probably haven’t mentioned a very specific terror of geese. This fear began in early childhood, when the geese at my grandpa’s farm chased and bit me any time I dared to walk past the pond. The fear is greater now than it was then. Perhaps it’s because my imagination has distorted the memory. I’m guessing it’s because a fellow bus rider recently told me that he was knocked off his feet by an angry, dive-bombing goose during a morning crossing of the shortcut lot in question.

Tomorrow, I’ll be taking the long way.

Picture
A baby bus chick with her beloved grandpa, a proud keeper of geese

Montlake: a pedestrian’s nightmare

To get home from the Eastside in the evenings, I usually take the 545 to Montlake and then transfer to the 48. I say “usually” because sometimes I ride the 545 all the way downtown to transfer just to avoid the tedious and time-consuming trip from the bus stop on 520 (where I get off the 545) to the bus stop on Montlake Blvd. (where I catch the 48).

I am OK with walking all the way up a long hill from the freeway stop to Montlake and then down the block to the corner of Montlake & E. Lake Washington (see black line below), but what’s with the crosswalk situation? There is no crosswalk directly across the street to the southbound bus stop (green line), so I have to either:

• Cross three times–and wait for three separate lights (orange line), OR
• Walk down a few flights of stairs to the eastbound side of the 520 (see label), walk a block or so west, and then walk up a couple more flights of stairs to the west side of Montlake.

Neither option works well when one is in a hurry to catch the bus, and missing a forty-late can mean a 30-minute wait on an isolated island surrounded by cars. No likey.

Three lights to cross one street: no likey

(Click the picture for a larger view.)

I was hoping that Greg Nickels would add this insane intersection to his list of streets that need improvements, but I think it will probably be left alone until we figure out what we’re going to do with 520. On the plus side: Stair climbing is good for your glutes.

Friday was a 234

This week was a week of obsession with numbers. I think it had something to do with the release of Prince’s 3121, which I am listening to as I type. I apologize to my neighbors for the liberties I have taken with the volume control on my computer speakers.

But I digress.

I have taken to keeping track of all the buses I ride in a day and (for reasons I cannot fully explain) adding up the numbers. I assign the final sum to the day–a sort of reverse numerology. A higher number usually means that it was a fairly busy bus day, but not necessarily. Suburban routes are three-digit numbers, so they add up quickly. In the days when I worked in Redmond, it would have been possible for me to ride to work and back only and still “earn” a 1090. Yesterday, on the other hand, I ran around from morning to night and earned a paltry 234. Here’s how I did it:

8
43
55
55
14
3
26
26
4

I also did a fair amount of walking. Which reminds me: So far, today’s been a zero. On sunny days when I don’t have to go to work or anyplace in particular, I like to rely on my feet.