I had two business meetings this last week on Friday. One in downtown Seattle and then another down in SODO (South of Downtown). Leaving Ballard and getting to Seattle is an easy exercise. Even while healing and a slower pace from walking and no bike option, downtown Seattle is a simple trip. It currently takes me an extra 5-20 minutes without the bike option, but it’s still only a 30-40 minute trip. But the ease of the trip ends at downtown, with anything south adding complexity at a dramatic rate.

Once I’ve arrived, either on the 17, 18, D Line, or 40 Bus, I then have to transfer to some bus or other mode that goes further south to SODO. Traveling through downtown is slow except on the LINK. But the LINK has two stops that aren’t particularly close to 1st avenue or very close to anything in the southern half of SODO.

Info on Ballard, SODO, and where downtown is for a better idea of these trips.

• Wikipedia page on Downtown Seattle
• Wikipedia page on SoDo
• Wikipedia page on Ballard
• Information on Wikipedia on ALL the neighborhoods

Regardless of the time it was an easy bus ride to both meets, with some of my current slow walking to each location. The weather was actually really nice during both of my walks from the bus to meeting, meeting to LINK, then LINK to meeting. Overall good trips, reliable, and they arrived (shockingly!) on time.

But let’s ponder a moment, since I’ve been doing this a bit more than usual dealing with being injured. My usual situation is to have my bike at my side. I can easily get on any of the above buses even sooner, splitting any time by 1/3-1/5th the walking time. On longer stretches connecting to the bus I easily can cut walking time even more by about 1/10th or more, because of the simple use of roadway and crossing sections that otherwise one must stop at in a car or walking, but on a bike one can slip between different blockages and still pass through legally on toward one’s destination.

I thought through the information and realized I could have cut out almost 32-36 minutes off of my walking time and could have cut out almost 8-20 minutes off of my bus riding time. The later I factored in that I could have caught the earlier 17 if I’d been on my bike, instead of limited to walking slowly from SODO to the 17 Express.

Being able to combine transit and bike trips, especially in massive cities in the United States, is fundamental to making trips quickly. Days like this, were I can’t pair the trips accurately are rough days. In future articles, I’ll break down comparisons in how I save tons of time versus using a car for errands, commutes, and trips too. It’ll get pretty spicy, so stay tuned. I’ve got some interesting and arguable disagreeable thoughts on the matter in the near future. I promise, whatever I do, it’ll be presented in standard Sleuth fashion with some data and good search terms to look into the matter futher!

Until next post, happy trips to all your destinations!