[seanmcdirmid]

You are located in the north of the city and need to get somewhere south of the city, or vice versa.

You only have a few roads to do that east or west of Lake Washington. In most cases, people aren't going to downtown Seattle, downtown Seattle is just in the way.

[uoaei]

Why are those services not available in the north of the city? This is as much a planning issue as traffic is.

[ndriscoll]

Maybe it doesn't make sense to have duplicated services for the city. I grew up in Tucson. There's a zoo, but it wouldn't really make sense to have 2 zoos. Likewise with the Sonoran Desert Museum. There are also unique locations to visit. There's 1 Titan Missile Museum. There's 1 Old Tucson Studios. There's 1 Biosphere 2. They are spread out on opposite ends of the city. There are a bunch of hiking spots that are all different, and people don't want to go to the same one over and over.

Then you have things like the air force base or the university. They're important for the economy so you may work at or near them, but for the most part you don't really want to live directly adjacent to them. Fighter jets are very, very loud all day long (my mom lived where you could see the runway right behind her house when I was a teenager), and the military is known to dump very nasty chemicals for their training exercises. University students throw parties, and there's more crime in the area. For a few years, I lived a little over 2 miles from the university, and I had my bike stolen out of my backyard. In the further out part of town where I grew up, that was completely unheard of. Some of the downtown parks are mostly full of homeless adults. The parks where I grew up were mostly full of kids/teenagers.

So there's reasons why you might want to live within a ~30 minute drive of a denser area with services or work, but without having to actually live near a dense area. And your day-to-day services are already spread across most of the city, so you don't need to travel for those. I get the impression that many cities have a similar dynamic.

[bluGill]

Why does it have to be a 30 minute drive? Why not a 30 minute transit ride? (if transit cannot provide a 30 minute ride that is a fixable problem)

[Brusco_RF]

Go look at a map of Tucson. Look at where the Titan II missile museum is, then look where Biosphere 2 is. Now tell me how much it would cost to build public transit between those two locations, and how many people would take it.

Trailheads are fundamentally incompatible with transit. They might be philosophical opposites. A trailhead accessible by rail is a trailhead I don't want to be at.

Not everywhere in the world is exactly the same. Stop trying to force a top-down solution that works in Europe on a geographically massive city like Tucson

[sfpotter]

Totally wrong. Transit != rail. There are amazing trailheads that are easily accessible from downtown Seoul by a reasonably short busride (e.g. Bukhansan national park). The fact that buses run to these trailheads does absolutely nothing to diminish them. In fact, they enhance them, because they make it possible to through-hike! Eat your heart out, personal automobile.

[ndriscoll]

Generally cars are going to be faster (it's point-to-point with no stops to let people on/off), or equivalently, they have greater range for the same time. If your goal is to physically remove yourself from downtown, they let you go a bit further. Also you don't have to deal with someone leaving their mac-and-cheese meal to stink up the bus. Getting away from such unpleasantries is kind of the point.

[muffinman26]

Once you take in to account traffic, transit can definitely be faster than cars. A subway that bypasses traffic entirely, or even a bus using HOV lanes, can easily outpace a car, especially if it's an express bus (fewer stops) and services are centrally located.

I've worked at places where it could take 20 minutes to get out of the parking garage when a bus stop was less than a 5 minute walk, on-boarding/off-boarding was super fast (a pre-pay kiosk meant people didn't stop to pay when they got on), and I could be all the way home in less than 20 minutes.

[com2kid]

Seattle is a narrow city bordered by water on the west and the east, so a lot of its expansion has happened along the north/south axis.

If I want to buy furniture, I need to go either to the far north or far south of the city to a suburb just outside the city limits (cheaper land).

Culturally, lots of food can only be found in certain areas of the city, which means north/south traveling.

In regards to services overall, obscene land prices means that not much new is being built that isn't owned by large corporations, so we are pretty much stuck with what we have, and what we have is rather quickly disappearing.

[seanmcdirmid]

I think it has to do with the way the city grew out north and south, with the city itself as a chokepoint (since it is surrounded by water otherwise). Common reasons people need to go from north seattle to south seattle: IKEA, Southcenter, Seatac. I'm sure there are reasons for people to go north as well, but I have a harder time thinking of them (other than that they went south and now have to come back north).

[com2kid]

There is some really great African food up north just outside the city. :-D Likewise along the northern parts of Aurora you can get some really great Korean food. (Also not strictly in the city limits).

Parks, lots of parks.

The only decent real "spas" I've found are all up north (Again, Shoreline, just outside of the city)

Ballard and Fremont are both big draws.

UW, kind of a biggie.

[seanmcdirmid]

Federal Way has good Korean food also (well, along with lots of Koreans). Frankly, you'll find Asian communities south, east and north, with the high end in the east, the middle end in the north, and lots of value in the south.

Schools are better in the north, which is why we chose Ballard rather than Beacon Hill. The reason I don't think about North Seattle so much is because I live here, I guess (and getting places isn't so hard if I'm not crossing Seattle).

[sfpotter]

It sounds like you are already set up for I-5 getting obliterated.

If you only go to the south end for Ikea, Southcenter, and Seatac, how often do you really need to do those things? It's not like it becomes impossible to drive there, it just takes a little longer. Frankly, traffic in Seattle just isn't that bad compared to other major cities. I just checked the traffic from Ballard to Ikea, and it's 45 minutes on 99... I-5 isn't even the ideal route right now.

Of course I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit here, but you also have to weigh this against just how much additional real estate would come available if I-5 was gone. I don't think people's need for driving convenience actually stacks up that strongly against all the other positive considerations.

[seanmcdirmid]

Whenever I-5 is blocked off, 99 will be a mess, so its not like I can just say "oh, not my problem because I can avoid using it." You have to think about the traffic between Vancouver BC and Portland Oregon, it has to go somewhere, and 405 is even worse than I5 most of the time.

[Tagbert]

Sure, and those are one reason why those of us who live on the south side might drive though the city to the north side.

[resonantjacket5]

> I think it has to do with the way the city grew out north and south, with the city itself as a chokepoint (since it is surrounded by water otherwise). Common reasons people need to go from north seattle to south seattle: IKEA, Southcenter, Seatac.

> I'm sure there are reasons for people to go north as well, but I have a harder time thinking of them (other than that they went south and now have to come back north).

@sean To reach UW, northgate (well it's demolished just ice skating for now lol), ballard and fremont; granted this is a bit optional, uvillage is nice to visit as well.

Also I find it a bit interesting you have a harder time thinking of interesting stuff in north seattle, I am actually sometimes annoyed having to drive north past downtown seattle to reach north seattle. I didn't really think about it but yeah ikea/southcenter are relatively easy for me to reach. :)

@uoaei Anyways regarding planning itself. Seattle is actually actively planning their next community plan, one of the items called out is whether to allow more 'urban villages' which have shops and other amenities.

For malls, Northgate should have been the north seattle mall but it's currently being redeveloped. There's U village but it's a bit high end. The other alternative of Alderwood mall isn't too bad to get to by driving but during peak traffic can be quite slow.

https://www.seattle.gov/opcd/one-seattle-plan

[seanmcdirmid]

I live in Ballard, so maybe I just got used to everything up here. We don't usually need to drive unless we go somewhere far away (if anything downtown, just take the D line).

[buildsjets]

Light Rail to Lynnwood will be open by September of this year, which gets you to within 2 miles of Alderwood Mall. Light Rail to Alderwood? 2040, suckers.