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Close-in marin, so Sausalito, Marin city, Larkspur, Corte Madera, San Rafael, and the 'Sir Francis Drake corridor' (San Anselmo, Kentfield, etc) are very walkab

Close-in marin, so Sausalito, Marin city, Larkspur, Corte Madera, San Rafael, and the 'Sir Francis Drake corridor' (San Anselmo, Kentfield, etc) are very walkable. I don't really understand the consternation about bart, the bus service is reliable, and both the marin transit and golden gate transit are the gold standard in american public bus service IMO. Clean, WIFI, nice seats... My wife and I frequently took public buses into San Francisco for date nights, and would come back late (last bus arrives past midnight, IIRC). > Marin county famously blocked BART from expanding north in order to keep out the “riff-raff”. Really good idea. Marin is a lovely place, and BART is famously terrible. Until the other cities in the bay area manage to enforce some semblance of law, I don't blame Marin for wanting nothing to do with them. > Zooming in near the walkable areas of San Rafael, Google Maps instantly highlights many car oriented businesses like at 2nd street and D street where we see a Chevron gas station, an Arco gas station, and an O’Reilly Auto Parts store all on one corner. Living in a walkable area does not imply removing every reminder of a car LOL. > They famously drew a circle around the city and said development can’t go outside of that area which forced a certain density and allowed transit to be planned well in advance. This is not why Portland developed this way. There are many places within the metro area that have not. Portland developed this way because it started as many small towns that merged, similar to Marin. The difference between PDX and Marin is that PDX is today much denser, but the basic layout is the same. I'll also note that you're getting really bogged down with the fact Marin has no public rapid train transit, as if thats necessary for walkability. Marin is walkable because there are so many downtowns, if you live nearby, you just go to your downtown, and the downtowns it does have are spectacular. Downtown San Anselmo, Fairfax, etc are IMO the definition of an American downtown. They are so charming it's painful.

mrgordon 5y ago
People can only walk so far especially if the weather is bad, they are older, etc. The point is if I have to walk past multiple gas stations and a car service center with broken down cars and fumes then it’s not a nice place to walk. I have lived next to a car service center before and even though it was tiny it was a constant blight on the neighborhood. Not to mention almost all the grocery stores in San Rafael are east of the highway while the Google-labeled walkable areas are west of the highway. So in practice people probably don’t walk to the grocery store on a regular basis unless they go to the Safeway. You may have a different view but Safeway is a terrible grocery store by Bay Area standards so it’d be a real shame for that to be your only realistic option without resorting to bus rides. Bus transit is less reliable than metro for a number of reasons, most notably getting stuck in traffic. It’s fine if it works for your particular usage pattern but a bus that runs once an hour and doesn’t have an exact arrival time isn’t the most convenient. I’d much rather have a metro that comes every couple minutes like almost every major city in Europe and Asia. You seem to hate BART but I’m not really sure why and why you believe the cities outside the North Bay are full of lawbreakers. San Mateo has a higher household income and SF is tied with Marin. Marin is just full of more NIMBYs. It’s not like their shit doesn’t smell just because they live in a less populated county. As for why I focus on public transit, it’s because you can only walk so far before you need another mode of transit. If you don’t find a convenient one, then most likely you’ll take a car. If people take cars a lot, then the city will be designed to support those cars which makes it harder to walk. Then fewer people can reasonably walk to all their needs so even more people buy cars creating induced demand as the highways and roads constantly need to be widened over the decades. Maybe you’re happy with a tiny little downtown like those in most of the Marin cities but for most people from a major city they would be bored with what they could easily explore on foot in one of those towns in probably a few weeks. Without a way to connect to other cities, you’re basically just trapped in a tiny little area without resorting to once an hour bus service and cars.

mrgordon 5y ago

People can only walk so far especially if the weather is bad, they are older, etc. The point is if I have to walk past multiple gas stations and a car service center with broken down cars and fumes then it’s not a nice place to walk. I have lived next to a car service center before and even though it was tiny it was a constant blight on the neighborhood. Not to mention almost all the grocery stores in San Rafael are east of the highway while the Google-labeled walkable areas are west of the highway. So in practice people probably don’t walk to the grocery store on a regular basis unless they go to the Safeway. You may have a different view but Safeway is a terrible grocery store by Bay Area standards so it’d be a real shame for that to be your only realistic option without resorting to bus rides. Bus transit is less reliable than metro for a number of reasons, most notably getting stuck in traffic. It’s fine if it works for your particular usage pattern but a bus that runs once an hour and doesn’t have an exact arrival time isn’t the most convenient. I’d much rather have a metro that comes every couple minutes like almost every major city in Europe and Asia. You seem to hate BART but I’m not really sure why and why you believe the cities outside the North Bay are full of lawbreakers. San Mateo has a higher household income and SF is tied with Marin. Marin is just full of more NIMBYs. It’s not like their shit doesn’t smell just because they live in a less populated county. As for why I focus on public transit, it’s because you can only walk so far before you need another mode of transit. If you don’t find a convenient one, then most likely you’ll take a car. If people take cars a lot, then the city will be designed to support those cars which makes it harder to walk. Then fewer people can reasonably walk to all their needs so even more people buy cars creating induced demand as the highways and roads constantly need to be widened over the decades. Maybe you’re happy with a tiny little downtown like those in most of the Marin cities but for most people from a major city they would be bored with what they could easily explore on foot in one of those towns in probably a few weeks. Without a way to connect to other cities, you’re basically just trapped in a tiny little area without resorting to once an hour bus service and cars.