People have to be willing to walk more than 4 blocks to catch a bus or train.

[Leopolds Ghost]

People have to be willing to walk more than 4 blocks to catch a bus or train.

Admittedly, the train has to GO somewhere. And the bus routes can't be circuitous. Bus routes that are designed for the significantly non-ambulatory (elderly or otherwise) are almost impossible to use, they crawl all over the place instead of staying on the main roads. Why?

Because the main roads are DANGEROUS and pedestrian hostile!! Our 8-lane boulevards should be the PRIMARY pedestrian arteries, like they are in other countries. Did you know that American suburban arterial roads are more dangerous to be on, on foot, than the inner city South Bronx? A dead person doesn't care if it was a car or a gun that killed him.

To learn more about the type of train system suburban cities absolutely NEED in order to work, visit this DC site:

http://earthops.net/purple-line/masterplan.html
http://earthops.net/purple-line/brown.html#elevated

This sort of system is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL or we are just beating our meat pretending that the suburbs will urbanize without access to rail transit.

Most rail transit is, and has always been, geared to suburban riders, not "Manhattanites."

There are other similar websites for cities like Seattle
(which is trying to build a citywide monorail system) and Phoenix.

Suburban should NOT mean not walkable!

But you need a viable transit system or these suburban pod-complexes of restaurants and shops are GARAGE-BASED and meaningless! Too many of them are totally artificial environments, geared to suburban drivers, even when a train system is nearby!

You need a window-shopping environment to encourage pedestrian use. Modern developers HATE window-shopping. That is why less and less people walk around Manhattan on foot. In the corporate theme park areas, there is less and less to see.

Even when a "neo-urban" development is built next to a train station, it's frequently built around a FREE, GOVERNMENT FINANCED, 6-9 STORY parking garage and they tear down the surrounding (pedestrian, sidewalk oriented) shops PURELY to make sure none of the new chain stores are more than 500 feet from secure, structured parking.

The government and banks mandate this, legally and financially, thru cap rates, not just incentives but legal requirements to provide parking for every man woman and child.

[LisaM]

1. I'd be willing to walk four SAFE blocks

which, in sidewalk-less Seattle, are hard to find. As it is, I need to walk through a wooded area, where there are often people hanging out drinking and getting high. I can walk around and risk getting hit by a car. Almost no sidewalks involved anywhere. I called the City Council and the woman told me to call 911 if I feel scared by people hanging out in the woods.

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. Why are there no sidewalks in Seattle?

As progressive (and affluent) as it is?

I haven't been to Seattle, but I lived in Portland, which does alright (mainly because the blocks there are so short).

Is Seattle still working on the proposed monorail?

[LisaM]

26. Well there are some, but it is not pedestrial friendly here

My neighborhood is north of 85th in Seattle, and the excuse they always give is that it didn't used to be in the city limits - true, but it was a good 70 years ago that it wasn't. In my area, they just never got around to putting sidewalks on the side streets - my choice of going home on the bus involves three sidewalkless options, all of which have their own safety issues (dark, walking in ditches, going through the woods, one lane road with no sidewalk....) It's kind of a hodge podge city anyway, but in various neighborhoods, the sidewalk issue is really a problem. They have them downtown but it's nowhere near as pedestrian friendly as Portland and there is currently a lot of construction downtown - they just block the sidewalks. There's one place where they've had it blocked off for more than a year. It does depend on the neighborhood, but there are plenty that just don't have them.

[Leopolds Ghost]

27. They should at least build those box thingies over the sidewalk

Does the city of Seattle encourage people to walk? I guess the lack of a rapid transit system makes it difficult to go anywhere on foot... which raises the question... are they still planning to build that monorail?

[LisaM]

30. No, outside interests and tax-phobes managed to kill it off.

Too bad; it would have been a good option. I like to walk and bike, but you are taking your life into your hands in some cases. There are a lot of accidents here involving pedestrians.

[Leopolds Ghost]

31. WHAT? When did this happen?

Got a link?

[LisaM]

32. Well they still have the original monorail

it was the extended monorail that the taxpayers voted for three times that they finally ditched plans for. Of course, the original monorail doesn't run half the time (it's working at the moment).

[Leopolds Ghost]

36. That toy line is meaningless. It appears Seattle voted to destroy their only black neighborhood

With slow-moving light rail oriented to a tiny minority of drivers, a pure parking displacement scheme, but not extend it northwards (that would require billions of dollars' worth of tunneling thru wealthy white areas)

Apparently they killed the monorail because it would cost $11 billion, but they want to spend $17 billion on lousy, 17-mile an hour light rail over 43 miles, noner of which goes thru any significant parts of the city.

In short, Seattleites appear to be wealthy hypocrites who are willing to kill off their only plans for a rapid transit line.

Call me in 50 years when Seattle is a series of rotting favelas climbing the hillside, isolated from each other by $10 gasoline.

[LisaM]

39. The wealth is unevenly distributed

and there's no income tax in Washington. As far as I can tell, the building and paving industries call all the shots as far as transit goes. Almost everyone I know in Seattle wants transit, votes for transit, does this repeatedly. The people who don't want it live on the Eastside - part of King County - and it's county and state dollars that call the transit shots. It's unfair, because Seattle basically carries the rest of the state taxwise yet everyone else bands against us and so transit is at a standstill. I wish we could chop the Eastside off from King County entirely - then things would change! There's a real us vs. them mentality going on, and the wealth is increasingly concentrated east of Lake Washington.

[Leopolds Ghost]

40. Maybe Seattle could secede from King County

If the wealth is on the Eastside I'm sure they won't mind. :hi:

[Leopolds Ghost]

43. I dont believe it. Not only did they kill the monorail, but Gov. Granholm (D) and Mayor Nickles said

That highway construction -- ciefly rebuilding the double-decker freeway along Seattle's waterfront -- was "a far higher priority" and the monorail was just "too expensive". Now they have passed a bill to sieze the money intended for the monorail and use it to finance transportation projects on the Eastside.

If the city votes to kill Sound Transit's $17 billion proposal to dig a
subway lengthwise along the isthmus (twice as expensive as the monorail
proposal), state officials warn that the monorail money will be spent on
roads, not transit.

The Sound Transit proposal calls for a spare, car-oriented network of light rail stations, running only in one direction (north-south) and only for one purpose (to carry the 5% of commuters that can't be accommodated by massive new bridge and highway construction projects.) All outlying stations would run at-grade, which includes road-widening and massive displacement in poor neighborhoods like Rainier Valley). A similar pattern is unfolding in cities like San Francisco and DC.

Light rail is about gentrification and speeding up traffic on the
highways, not getting people out of their cars.

[hobbit709]

2. When I last worked

I would gladly have ridden the bus to work if it hadn't been such a hassle. I worked 12 hour shifts
and it would have added 5 hours travel time to that instead of 40 minutes in my truck. The bus used to stop across the street from my house, then they changed the route so I would have to walk about a half mile, then they changed the number of stops so I would have to walk 3/4 mile from my house. The bus got downtown 2 minutes AFTER the connecting bus left-so there's another 1/2 hour wait. Then I would have to connect with another bus after a 20 minute wait. The stop I needed to get off at was 3/4 mile from the place I worked. 17 hours out of my day to just get to work, work, and get home from work doesn't leave much time for eating, sleeping or anything else. Of course my problem was solved after bush took over and I was laid off along with 2500 other people at the same place.

[Ron Green]

4. K&R. This is hugely important.

[Leopolds Ghost]

7. Alas, Kerry would have been our first promoter of mass transit in office since JFK

Both are from Boston, Massachusetts... coincidence?

Clinton and Gore were far less interested in transit than Kerry... Senior Dems mainly supported transit as a niche market for wealthy urbanites, but were unwilling to commit the billions of dollars needed for a REAL system in most cities, like you have in places like Kazakhstan... they are more concerned with electrifying the automobile, which will only result in a marginally reduced rate of fossil fuel consumption as we switch to coal, tar sands and natural gas. And more importantly, it won't promote healthy behavior or resource conservation if we continue to pave over our cities and never walk more than 4 blocks in any direction. Too often it is a matter of having grown up somewhere where it is either impossible, or strongly discouraged because of the lack of sidewalks.

[DarkTirade]

22. I was amazed the first time I visited Boston

I live in Orlando, which has crap public transit and an amazing amount of urban sprawl. The only place where we actually have 'blocks' is in our very small downtown area.
When I visited Boston... it was just amazing to me. It was a real city. It was possible to get around WITHOUT a car. You could get an apartment on one side of town and a job on the other... and not have to worry about traffic or parking to get there.

[rox63]

23. I've known lots of people who've lived without a car in Boston

It's expensive (parking, insurance, excise taxes) and inconvenient to own a car in Boston, especially if you also work in the city. Since the public transit is excellent, there's really no need for a car.

[DarkTirade]

24. I have a step-sister and a great-uncle who live there.

My step-sister spent her first few years there without a car (going to college at the time), and my uncle owns a house within walking distance of one of the major T-stations.

[Donnachaidh]

5. I used to do TEN blocks, twice a day

when I lived in New York. And I loved it.

I *wish* we had something approaching mass transit where I am now.

[Bluebear]

6. But not everyone is physically capable!

God forbid we offer electronic golf car pick-up service at people's residences to bring them to the terminals.

[Leopolds Ghost]

8. There is nothing wrong with that.

But public health requires awareness of what the human body was designed for, except for the elderly and disabled... and by disabled I mean people with a medical condition or physical handicap, not arthritis or weak knees... conditions whose primary treatment is exercise. Unless we want natural selection to remove our ability to walk 4 miles a day like our ancestors did in the wild.

People who are no longer ambulatory should not be expected to walk, but then again, they shouldn't be expected to drive and wait in a shelter and climb on a bus either... there should of course be more para-transit services for people who can't walk very far.

People who can't walk much at all are among the biggest supporters of neo-urbanism, because, even though they can't go very far and may not be able to use the actual transit, they have to live some place that is within walking or wheelchair distance from shops and services or they become trapped indoors in a nursing home... transit-oriented development such as a "main street" type suburb enables them to do this, even though they may have to be driven to other places farther afield.

[Catherine Vincent]

9. I have to make one little correction.

Yes, treatment for most arthritis should be exercise and walking. Except if you have gout (form of arthritis), which is mostly in your feet. You cannot walk when you have a flareup. It is very painful.

[Bluebear]

15. Peripheral vascular disease, another condition

People suffering from PVD are not necessarily para-transit qualified, yet 4 blocks could be an impossible situation for them when there is a flare-up. My utopian dream, again, would dictate that these people could call their local transit station for a "lift" to the main terminal :)

[Leopolds Ghost]

18. If we are going to build big gov't funded parking lots at every neo-urban shopping mall

We should turn them all into multi-use transit stations with lobbies, and shops, and trains or bus terminals on the ground floor level, and of course, paratransit. With air-conditioned waiting rooms for paratransit, rideshare and flexcar users.

Most government funded parking garages are depressing places to be in.

Instead of lots of different garages designed to meet the on-site parking requirements for every little store, we should have one giant parking garage in the center of every big shopping district, and have that be the hub for paratransit and other local services.

Right now the government requires businesses with no on-site parking to be located no more than 75-100 yards from a public parking garage, which of course does nothing for paratransit (after all, most businesses have room for one or two handicapped spaces out front).

[undergroundpanther]

10. I walk more than 4 blocks

To catch a bus that does not always go where I need to get to.
I hate ford Chrysler ect..Because this country was built around cars because of THEM,and their greedy bullshit , not human beings or sustainable existence.Public space town zoning should NEVER be bent to the will of a profit hungry corporations desires.

We need to make towns fit for human existence.
We don't need more roads we need better public transport.And sadly the only way that will happen is if GAS gets too expensive for the average person to afford to dump it in a goddamn car and RE mortgage the house to feed an SUV gallons of gas all for 1 person's fucking commute to a job that takes hours to get to and from.This lifestyle designed around the car is just asinine.

Don't even get me started on the insane suburban stupidity, the waste of fuel and free time called a LAWN.Lawns are the biggest waste of space,fuel and time.It's not even fit for animals to live,so they become roadkill or are driven further into the few remaining weedy woodsy places left when sprawl takes over an area,This idiocy of making a patch of mono-culture grass grow lush with pesticides and chemicals to sustain it and barren of biological diversity of life,was originally a way for the petty landholders to ape the rich who had golf course like expanses of grass and servants to tend it.Poor people didn't BOTHER with mowing lawns long ago.Now it all is just pathologically stupid to continue this competitive what will the neighbors think if my grass grows over 4.5 inches game.Please stop mowing.Give a rabbit a home and food.Dammit.Least you can do after a developer destroyed the land for your ticky tacky overpriced sprawling cul de sack.

[seemunkee]

11. I like the red line extension

but it doesn't go far enough. It needs to go to Olney, there is enough population density there that a couple of circulator buses could easily bring enough riders to the 108/Georgia intersection to be viable.

Where's the end point for the route that goes through Kensington?

[Leopolds Ghost]

14. Leesburg. :-) But only as DMU (conventional, snail rail)

Pink is light rail -- electrified. Actually DMU is faster than light rail and subway trains are lighter than light rail, but don't tell anyone -- people think subways are more expensive, they aren't really.

The black, dotted line portion would go from Columbia to Leesburg through Kensington and Germantown / Whites Ferry and then circle around possibly as far as Dulles (near Rockville Pike, along the existing MARC tracks.)

It'd have to duck underground through Wheaton to get between the existing MARC tracks and Route 29, which was recently turned into a freeway (there we go, moving in the wrong direction :-)

so there's plenty of room for high-speed rail between White Oak and Columbia because it's all a freeway now.

The light rail (pink) part would only go as far as Kensington to Clarksburg, however.


The outer part (Clarksburg to Shady Grove, through all the office parks and the giant neo-traditional Kentlands and King Farm developments) is already on the books.

DMU (diesel multiple unit, essentially, articulated buses on conventional railroad tracks like they have in rural parts of Europe) is much cheaper so it can go further.

Regarding Olney: the trick is getting there. There's a whole 2 miles of tunnel that would have to be dug between Olney and Liesure World with no stops imbetween.

Theoretically, that means it's cheaper and faster, but that's not the way politicians think. They think: "how many different parts of my district can we serve for X amount of money?"

[seemunkee]

19. Divert the money from the ICC to the rail projects

What little support I had for the ICC disappeared when they cut the parrallel bike path due to budget concerns.

If the pink line goes to Leesburg where are you crossing the Potomac? New bridge at White's Ferry?

Are you saying that there is already a plan to run DMU from Clarksburg to Rockville?

[Leopolds Ghost]

20. 2 answers to your two questions (I agree with you on the ICC)

1. Yes, DMU would go northwest from Kensington to Darnestown and split off at Darnestown and go southwest to Leesburg. But only as conventional rail (dotted black line runs under the pink line between Kensington and Gaithersburg)

Since it's only conventional rail, you could simply build a rail spur through the PEPCO Darnestown power plant / incenerator area (which already has a rail spur for coal) and follow the publically owned lands along the river and cross near Whites Ferry.

This would only happen if it benefited the owner of Whites Ferry somehow (perhaps they could allow him to build a pay parking lot on the Maryland side of the river and make money off the rail line.)

This would allow him to renovate the ferry itself, which he's running illegally without a permit (in defiance of Bush's Coast Guard nuts, who are answerable to rich Republicans in the nearby horse country).

2. The pink line splits off at Shady Grove and turns into something called the Corridor Cities transitway, which is already on the books.

It's designed to run between Clarksburg (which was until recently farmland) and Shady Grove.

It will move circuitously through Gaithersburg to hit Kentlands and all the office parks. Ideally, it will eventually continue south, either along Viers Mill road or the MARC tracks (both options shown).

http://earthops.net/purple-line/masterplan.html

(All the areas I just mentioned are off-map, to the far west side where the pink lines go...)

My understanding is they will leave the railroad tracks clear between Shady Grove and Germantown, in order to allow a parallel Red Line extension. So I guess that's on the books too.

A DMU to Leesburg would use the existing tracks and wouldn't affect this.

The light rail would have to split off from the railroad tracks at Shady Grove (existing end of the Red Line) and turn into the Corridor Cities Transitway. So the Corridor Cities Transitway will get built first.

[MissMarple]

12. In Colorado, people drive, park, and ride.

We have an express bus service that now goes from points in Colorado Springs to points in Denver. In Denver we can connect to light rail. It is possible to go from the Springs to Denver International Airport, and back again. I haven't done this, but I know someone who has. One friend frequently uses the bus to visit her daughter. And they said here that no one would use the bus, it has now been expanded, and no one would use light rail in Denver. When that first opened the parking lots were full, as were the rail cars. :)

[Leopolds Ghost]

21. Dallas has big plans for a light rail system... don't they?

Seattle wants to go even further and build a monorail, if they do, it will be the first new rapid transit system built in the US since the Lyndon Johnson era.

[strategery blunder]

13. I'm perfectly willing to walk four blocks.

In Chicago, I walked seven blocks or so to get to the Jefferson Park station.

However, Jefferson Park has SIDEWALKS and pedestrian signals. ;)

Phoenix (within city limits, I don't know so much about the suburbs) is walkable, at least where I lived, but there, the transit system shuts down too damn early to be useful; routes start ending at eight at night. Though, one thing I will credit Phoenix with: their bus system ain't as sparse as it used to be. :)

But suburbia...ugh. No sidewalks. No crosswalks. No pedestrian signals. You can only walk within your little cul de sac. Unless you want to get hit by a car. Ugh.

[Withywindle]

16. I do it every day, no problem.

And two weeks ago, I walked half a mile carrying a wooden ladder from the hardware store. (This is a big deal for me. I'm not butch).


Although I have to say, I will probably never be in as good shape as I was those six months I lived in Manhattan--in a 6th-floor walkup.

[SmokingJacket]

17. I'd LOVE to ride the bus.

And sometimes I do, but not as a daily thing, because it's $1.50 each way for me alone, and another $1.25 for each of my kids. That's $8 to go to the grocery store!

And though it's affordable by myself, I'm not elderly or handicapped, and can walk almost anywhere in our small city in under an hour and a half, which is how long the longest bus routes take. Most routes that I want to use are not much quicker than walking.

It's a farce!!

[Jcrowley]

25. Kick and Rec n/t

[RebelOne]

28. I'd walk 4 blocks if there was a bus or train station to walk to.

I live northwest of Atlanta in Woodstock, GA. There is absolutely no public transportation here. The closest bus depot is in Kennesaw about 6 miles from me. So, it wouldn't make sense to drive 6 miles to a bus when it is only 13 miles to my office.

[TahitiNut]

29. Once upon a time, "close to transit line" was a selling point for homes.

Sadly, those criteria have capsized as we obsess about the price of everything and the value of nothing.

[RC Quake]

33. I'd love to walk to a bus or train stop!

We just have to realize that it won't happen within 4 blocks of everyone's house. But, for me it's not the distance, but the time. I'd be willing to take 20 minutes to walk 2 miles to a stop, but there just isn't enough time in the day to allow for a longer walk.

Currently, I walk 6-8 miles a day between walking my dogs and walking across campus to meetings. It would be great to add another 4 miles per day. Heck, the more I walk, the more I can eat. :evilgrin:

[Leopolds Ghost]

37. It is a circular argument to say we'll never get transit within 4 blocks of everyone's house

Because the people saying that are unwilling to walk far enough to make any possible transit system useful to them.

Take away the billions of dollars for asphalt (especially from liberal hypocrite assholes in Seattle who killed a rail system 5 times in the past 50 years)

and see how easy it becomes for them to maintain their present habits of refusing to PARK more than 4 blocks from their house.

That is my verdict.

[RC Quake]

41. It really isn't possible

To get a bus stop within 4 blocks of EVERYONE's house. There is no way they are going to put a bus stop on a country dirt road leading to the mountains where there isn't another house for 2 miles. Won't happen, so the circular argument applies only to areas where the population warrants the transit system.

[Leopolds Ghost]

42. The operative standard should be a train station a mile from 3/4 of the population.

That would place roughly 1/4 of the population within 1/4 mile of a train station
(in suburban areas).

98% of the population (excepting outliers in deserted areas) should be within 1/4 mile of a bus stop (not 4 blocks).

In areas where people can't walk 1/4 mile (as the crow flies) within 10 minutes, often because of unsafety, total redesign of the streets is called for.

The streets are engineered by the gov't, just like levees. we should hold the gov't legally accountable for creating a public danger where arterials have inadequate sidewalks (often less than 5% of the right-of way) and side streets have zero connectivity.

[AngryAmish]

34. Suburban should mean walkable

[Firespirit]

35. Public transit is fine

It should definitely be an option for those who want to use it, and available and reliable. But it isn't for everyone. I cannot tell you how many times I was late for work -- seriously late, 1 1/2 to 2 hours -- because of delays in the subway system. I've also caught a lot of illnesses from the close proximity of people, and the necessity of touching support rods in the subway cars. As a result, I finally just gave it up and began using the car. At least if there are road problems, I might be able to take a different path to get where I need to be.

[xxqqqzme]

38. here in public-transportation-starved

southern California - I walk 1/2 mile to catch a bus. And because it is public transportation starved, it is a bus route that it extremely circuitous. There are high school kids that ride this bus every day. I cannot imagine when their school day begins.