wow. I have been walking since my childhood living in two different cities (Taipei and NYC). I really enjoy walking hours just to look at streets and scenes in different hours of days. I feel that I can perceive the environment while walking in much higher resolutions and bandwidth of information flowing into my brain than driving.
I was interviewed once in Mountain View in 2006 and I remembered walking on El Camino Real rd between Palo Alto and Sunnyvale on 100F July. I was the only one walking on the road and it is pain in ass to cross road since the traffic system is designed for cars. But I still remember vividly the scenes along El Camino Real between Palo Alto to Sunnyvale until now, even just one day in my life.
Yeah El Camino sucks (and 100F to boot, that is probably less than once a year occurrence), but it's quite nice to walk through the neighborhoods. I used to commute 10 miles from Sunnyvale to downtown PA by bike (or maybe Caltrain if the weather was bad). The first time I rode all the way on El Camino, but within a few weeks I had pieced together a route that completely avoided El Camino. I felt pretty proud of myself when I figured out all the pieces through trial and error. A few months later Google Maps added bicycle directions and nailed my route almost perfectly.
El Camino is definitely a car oriented byway, where the pedestrian is a second class citizen. Through most of the towns it passes through on the Peninsula, it has what I can only describe as an automobile-scale commercial "strip" quality.
But for the most part the cities are much more pedestrian scale and walkable just a short distance away from this road. "Never judge a city by its El Camino Real"; it's usually one of the least pleasant parts...
I was interviewed once in Mountain View in 2006 and I remembered walking on El Camino Real rd between Palo Alto and Sunnyvale on 100F July. I was the only one walking on the road and it is pain in ass to cross road since the traffic system is designed for cars. But I still remember vividly the scenes along El Camino Real between Palo Alto to Sunnyvale until now, even just one day in my life.