I moved to Sonoma County in mid-2014. There's a lot to like here, including a high level of environmental awareness in the community. Still, I see so much untapped opportunity every day to help Sonoma County better live up to its green aspirations.*
OK, that was an attempt to be diplomatic and polite to the many Sonomans who have given me and my wife such a warm welcome to our new community. But honestly, I find myself screaming silently inside my head almost every day: What were the planners, developers, and engineers thinking when they laid out the streets and developed the public transit of this car-crazy place!? I know many of the most egregious features of the built landscape here are a legacy of decisions made many decades ago. But still, some of the infrastructure seems to me so dysfunctional it should be treated as a public safety emergency by today's leaders.
I'm launching this blog to share ideas and make connections with people who might be thinking similar thoughts to those I mutter under my breath as I bike, walk, and bus my way across Santa Rosa each day. Please let me know what you're muttering about.
More as a note to myself than anything, here are a few topics I'm hoping to cover in the near future -- with maps, photos, and other fun features!
- Highway 101: Santa Rosa's great divide for the car-less
- Pedestrian-unfriendly landscapes: a case study on Steele Lane
- City Bus: really? 60 minutes between buses and no service after ~8pm?? In a city of 170,000?
- Imagining a great leap forward in public transit
- Pedestrian-favoring infrastructure: on-demand street crossing
* I'm fortunate to get to work on those green aspirations every day through my job with the County's Energy and Sustainability Division and my volunteer work with the Sonoma County Trails Council. But I want to make it clear that what I write in this blog is strictly my own thoughts and is in no way endorsed by either of those organizations.
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