nothing will radicalize you in favor of public transit faster than actually driving around, especially in a car-first area.
today i decided to go down to the issaquah salmon hatchery to see all the salmon coming home for the year, so after i finished with an errand i drove down there because there was no public transit options on a weekend that wouldn't have added 90+ minutes. when i got there, it turned out today was a festival day in issaquah. cool! why not make it a festival visit too!
except in practice this meant that every single parking spot in a multi-mile radius was taken (both on-street and off-street), and because the town was not designed to have people take over main boulevards it was nightmare traffic all around. google proceeded to steer me into a dead end multiple times. eventually i just gave up and went home because there was simply no way for me to get from a car to the festival or hatchery short of circling in bumper-to-bumper traffic indefinitely hoping i caught someone leaving a parking space.
the eta for light rail coming to issaquah is currently 2044.
