Comment by honkhonkpants | Hacker News Reader

Comment by honkhonkpants | Hacker News Reader

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Glancing at the map of Centennial, Colorado, tells me that this is way beyond a first/last mile problem. The problem is this exurb is so sparse that there's nothing within a mile of this station. This appears to be the walking path from the nearest residence to the Dry Creek station, and it's a full mile if you make a suicidal dash across a five-lane with a 40MPH speed limit, or 1.2 miles if you follow legally-prescribed sidewalks and crosswalks.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/39.5800626,-104.8864011/Dry+...

This isn't a "last mile" problem it is a problem with this urban form, which cannot be effectively served by transit. It's hard to believe anyone put a rail station here in the first place. It must have cost a fortune, especially with that multi-story parking structure.

Probably the best thing that could be done with this site is take the rail station as a blessing and level all of those office parks within a mile of the place, building up a walkable transit village instead. You could easily put several thousand residences in that area instead of what appears to be a shitload of surface parking.

>It's hard to believe anyone put a rail station here in the first place.

It's not. Perhaps you've never lived in a suburb with a train. They're incredibly useful in getting to the city.

You don't need to be able to walk to the station for it to be useful. Its surprising you think that's how public transit needs to work.

This is a commuter train. You live in the suburbs, drive to the station or get dropped off, and take the train 95% of the way to work. It saves you having to drive in traffic, and parking in downtown where space is limited and expensive. It's incredibly useful.

Without that train living in the suburbs and working downtown would be shit.

> Without that train living in the suburbs and working downtown would be shit.

I second that. I live in the suburbs of Chicago. When I moved here - I thought I would drive to downtown (my work location). Everyday, my one way drive was taking about 2 hours. It was pathetic. I switched my commute to train. It was about 30 mins ride along with the benefit of either taking a nap or doing my work.

Strangely enough, I live in the Willow Creek neighborhood you selected. For me, living on the opposite side, it would be just over a two mile walk. And for the most part, it's a very pleasant walk through a park-like development of mature trees, creeks, playgrounds, a school, etc. The last section is not too bad either with cross-walks, lights, etc. And the Google map is a bit out of date. There's a new condo development just a block or so away from the station. But for me, it's a moot-point as my commute is in the opposite direction...

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