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But Seattle is up 25% in this decade. We passed LA in density within city limits.
And you really don't want to compare transit between Seattle and LA. Guess who's much higher in commute share?
Being able to maintain over 8000 ppsm across 469 square miles is way more significant than being able to maintain slightly more than that over 80 miles.
I don't see obscure commute metrics as being relevant here, as Los Angeles is a true legacy mass transit city which accounts for such massive area of urban density. Seattle just decided to be serious about this a few decades ago, and its small urban footprint reflects that.
It has a horrible transit share by the "legacy mass transit city" standard. Seattle beats it in every way in ridership share. Even county, which is a pretty parallel comparison.
King County: 14.9% transit commute share, 5.2% walk, 1.7% bike, 60.2% drive alone.
LA County: 5.7% transit commute share, 2.6% walk, 0.7% bike, 73.9% drive alone.
The dropoff in density from downtown to the rest of the city is tremendous and I don't think we see anything like it in LA.
Seattle's dominant land use is bungalows. It's not surprising that you can walk to some in 15 minutes from the CBD (not easily to your example...big hill in the way).
As for the Rainier Valley, it's not emblematic of Seattle density. The north is much denser. When Link opens three stations to the north in 2021, two will be in denser spots and the third is a suburban type area starting a rapid transformation.
But Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill are densifying too. Rainier Beach Station will always be low density as it's the intersection of two greenbelts, an industrial valley, and a power line corridor. Beacon Hill will always be on a small scale based on its limited dense zoning. We've done a poor job of upzoning station areas in general. But both stations have projects coming, as do all of the others.
It has a horrible transit share by the "legacy mass transit city" standard. Seattle beats it in every way in ridership share. Even county, which is a pretty parallel comparison.
King County: 14.9% transit commute share, 5.2% walk, 1.7% bike, 60.2% drive alone.
LA County: 5.7% transit commute share, 2.6% walk, 0.7% bike, 73.9% drive alone.
Should we do metros too?
You dodged the entire point and reverted back to the same familiar talking point.
The fact that Los Angeles coalesced around one of the largest mass transit systems in world history guarantees an urban form that Seattle can't have (see thread title).
We can listen to the echo chamber of "hurr durr, polynodal, decentralized, strip malls, auto centric" from the conventional wisdom peddlers who don't really know what they're talking about on this forum or we can look at that one basic fact.
Seattle's dominant land use is bungalows. It's not surprising that you can walk to some in 15 minutes from the CBD (not easily to your example...big hill in the way).
As for the Rainier Valley, it's not emblematic of Seattle density. The north is much denser. When Link opens three stations to the north in 2021, two will be in denser spots and the third is a suburban type area starting a rapid transformation.
But Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill are densifying too. Rainier Beach Station will always be low density as it's the intersection of two greenbelts, an industrial valley, and a power line corridor. Beacon Hill will always be on a small scale based on its limited dense zoning. We've done a poor job of upzoning station areas in general. But both stations have projects coming, as do all of the others.
Link has been operational for 11 years and the city has failed to up-zone properly which is such a missed opportunity.
And one can say that these are not emblematic of Seattle's density, but really they are the norm and the outliers are the denser tracts. The entirety of the southern half of the city is extremely suburban in build form, as are most areas in the north once you get past Ballard, Freemont and the UD.
It's been 2 years since I was in Seattle, so maybe things have changed drastically, but I definitely feel like the drop-off in density is very abrupt once you leave the core.
Seattle is very urban.. It and LA are probably the best examples of post-car urban development.
But directly comparing them to the urban vernacular of DC & Baltimore (both of which predate the automobile by well over a century) is going to be difficult when they are so different in built from.
By 1925 Los Angeles had more miles of interurban rail than NYC has today. How many private cars do you think were on the road in 1925?
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