Walkscore has been one of my favorite sites since it come out. The site lets you enter an address and find out how “walkable” it is. Now, they’ve released a list of the most walkable cities in America, and even tell you which are the most walkable neighborhoods in each city. Visit site »
Southwest Airlines started flying slower about two months ago, and projects it will save $42 million in fuel this year by extending each flight by one to three minutes.
Wow, insane. And awesome. Visit site »
The state of Washington is now juggling 10 possible options for replacing or rebuilding the Alaskan Way Viaduct along Seattle’s downtown waterfront. The usual suspects — tunnels, surface street, and elevated roadways — are present, but so it an option I hadn’t heard of before: a bridge over Elliot Bay.
Apparently this was previously considered, and is now back on the table. Check out some ideas here, here, and here. It’s an intriguing idea. I can’t decide if the thing would be a total eyesore or an iconic landmark (a la bridges in San Francisco, Sydney, etc.). Either way, it’s interesting to consider. Visit site »
The city is looking into the feasibility of more streetcars, along the lines of the now-infamous South Lake Union Trolley — err, Streetcar. From the looks of the maps, this would be killer for Michelle and I. Our apartment is a block from a stop on the proposed red (Seattle Center/Queen Anne/Mercer/Capitol Hill) line and just a couple blocks from two different stops on the proposed green (Ballard/Interbay/Waterfront/Belltown/Pioneer Square/SoDo/West Seattle) line — and the system goes up to Fremont, where I work, and South Lake Union, where Michelle works.
SLUTs aren’t honest-to-goodness rapid transit, but they’re better than busses, and if SLUTs will go as far as this says they will, you can bet I’ll ride them. Visit site »
Unfortunately, by 2012, we’ll all be in our cars under a pile of concrete. Seriously, though: I’d love to see a tunnel built where the viaduct stands right now, but I do understand it’s very expensive. A street-level road seems like it would either be not big enough to handle all of the viaduct’s traffic or so big that it would further separate downtown/Belltown from the waterfront. A tunnel could really bring the waterfront and downtown/Belltown together, which would be awesome. Visit site »
Booyah! I know who I’m flying next time I go to CA. Visit site »
If not for the municipal clusterfuck that apparently happened before I moved here, a futuristic monorail system would have opened last week, with two stops a stone’s throw from my apartment — thus making my neighborhood (which already includes the Space Needle and EMP) look even more like the town the Jetsons built. Eliza Truitt has some really great photos she took of the locations where monorail stops would have been.
I wasn’t here through the debate around it, but it strikes me as really sad this project never happened. Would have been sooo cool. We are set to get light rail in 2008, though, so that will be nice. Sadly, it won’t come too close to my apartment — although I can always take the existing 1962 World’s Fair monorail over to Westlake, which will be a light rail station. Visit site »
Help him find her. Visit site »
Having just been in London for the first time, I was really fascinated by the “helpful distortion” in the Tube map. It’s a brilliant design decision to have the Underground map not necessary that related to the overground geography that makes the Tube map so simple to read and understand. It’s a simple solution, but it took a bold decision to make it happen — most people simply aren’t comfortable with the lack of geographical relationship between stations and compared to overground landmarks. The proposed NYC “Kick map” is possibly even better — a really great solution that will probably never get implemented. Visit site »