Today's walkability/walk-to-work experiment

San Carlos was recently ranked very high for a most walkable City {update edit:  actually, it was Redwood City and I finally found the reference link: http://www.walkfriendly.org/news_2012-09-06.cfm }.  That was the final reason that convinced me to walk to work today.  When I ride my bike to work, the computer says it's 2.2 miles.  At about 3 to 4 miles per hour, I figured it would take me about 45 minutes.

Here's how the times broke down:  House to train station = 12 minutes, train station to 101 interchange = 9 minutes, across the interchange = 5 minutes, and interchange to office = 16 minutes.  Total time door-to-door = 42 minutes.  Not too bad considering by car it can take as much as 20 minutes if I have to sit through a couple traffic signal cycles on Holly and miss some of the other signals.  By bike it's about the same (20 minutes).  Both car and bike are easily longer heading home, whereas I imagine walking will be about the same 42 minutes.

Interestingly, I ended up being hotter and sweatier walking than I do biking.  Maybe because it's just more overall time with less wind cooling me off and more sun shining down.

Overall, I would say it was an easy walk without incident and little vehicular conflicts.  For a civil engineer, there's nothing better than being on the street to notice the infrastructure that needs improvement or could have been designed better.

I wish I could turn off the pedestrian walk phase when I get to the other corner.  I feel bad for the traffic on the cross street that will have to wait long after I've already cleared the street.  Sure, it's important to time the phase for elderly or disabled... but when I'm the only pedestrian that can clear the street in a quarter of the time, why not let me cancel it at the other end?

The improvements at the train station at Old County Road and East San Carlos Ave are going to be great.  During the public participation portion of our San Carlos East Side Connect project, a concept was developed to bulb-out the station area at the intersection... what a great decision!  This will be FAR more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

Our East Side Connect project also includes improvements to East San Carlos Ave.  The changes at Bayport will be nice, but the improvements will mostly be noticed by bikes rather than peds.  Today's walk reinforced the inability to really do anything significant to the block between Bayport and Industrial.  It will take redevelopment of those parcels to make any significant improvement.  Also, I noticed between Old County and Bayport, there are some slabs of sidewalk that have heaved from adjacent trees - these should be ground down for ADA compliance.  This should be separate from the East Side Connect project, and would be nice to have done beforehand.

Approach slabs at interchange bridge structures allow differential settlement between the roadway and the bridge structure so vehicles don't have to drive over a big step in the roadway.  That's great, but there is definitely no approach slab for pedestrians.  There is a large step in the sidewalk on the Holly interchange.  A pedestrian approach slab would be good to incorporate into interchanges.

Only one crossing on the interchange was a bit sketchy for me.  The northbound loop onramp after the weaving section was challenging.  I think this was largely because of the lack of sight distance with the vertical curve.  I really couldn't tell which lane the approaching cars were in and if or where they were changing lanes.  I could have just waited until I didn't see any cars, but that would probably be a long wait and more than likely a car would stop in the street for me (which I think is dangerous and shouldn't happen).  The reconfigured interchange in the future, and Caltrans' policy of converting full cloverleafs to partial cloverleafs, will solve this issue.

On the Redwood Shores side of the interchange, as you cross the street, there is a sidewalk for about 200-feet... and then it ends. We shouldn't be teasing pedestrians with a sidewalk that ends mid-block.  If there at least had been a sign that directed me to cross the street, or notifying me that the sidewalk ended, I would have known to cross the street instead - and that would have been totally fine with me.  In retrospect, it would have been the better way to go anyway, I think.

Then, the only last bit of challenge was to try and avoid all the goose poop on the walkways leading up to my office.  Darn geese.

I look forward to my walk home at the end of the day.  It's energizing, peaceful, and is getting me into better walking shape for our upcoming European vacation.