Another Seattle question
 

How bad is it getting in and out of downtown for work?

Say here: 5303 Shilshole Ave. N.W. Seattle, WA

Seattle is widely acknowledged as having some of the worst traffic in the nation. We have long since outgrown the carrying capacity of our roads and freeways. With all the water around, there is no place to put any more roads, so it's only going to continue to get worse.

Depends on where you live. I've never lived there but I have visited many times. I always stayed at my sisters who lives in Queen Anne neighborhood. She works in the heart of downtown - it's only a couple of miles which she walks about 50% of the year. Driving can take 25 minutes during rush hour.

On a good day. 15 minutes
Double that for a bad day.

It's a pretty easy commute. You wouldn't want to walk it, but it's a nice bike ride to downtown. And you're about 3 miles from John Walker's.

Traffic sux, but that address is so close to downtown that it wouldn't be a problem. FWIW, I regard that as a nice area of town.

So is the address I posted considered downtown? Is it any easier to get in and out of?

Maybe I should put this another way. If I worked here: 5303 Shilshole Ave. N.W. how hard will it be to get to? Would it be better if I lived north or south of the city? We'd probably be looking north first as that's where my wife's family is.

The address you posted is not "Downtown", it is Ballard. Driving from Ballard to Downtown could be a bear. First, you have to cross Ballard Bridge, which is a draw bridge. It can slow you down for 5 minutes or so. Next, you have 15th Ave. which is somewhat of a speed trap, ranging from 35 mph to 45 mph (it might be 40 mph). Traffic on 15th can be very congested and slow. Once you get Downtown, 15 merges onto Denny Way, and from Denny Way you can turn off onto whatever street you need to get all the way Downtown. Once Downtown, traffic can be pretty bad and the lights are not as synchronized as one would hope. All in all, I would say 15 minutes on a good day, 30 on a not so good day.

Ballard is a nice old neighborhood that has a Scandinavian heritage. It used to have a lot of older people, but recently it has become a younger, more hip area. Prices are going up as well.

The address is not downtown proper. Walker's place, on Greenwood, is a nice area. Near there is the boomtown we call "Greenlake." Finney Ridge would, in my view, be a very nice place to reside but out of my price range fer sher.

Thanks Scott, that helps. So lets pretend I didn't say anything about downtown, :) how hard is Ballard to get to? Is 5 a bear no matter what?

Ballard is a PITA to get in and out of. (Seattle likes poor traffic flow) However, if you bike, there is a nice east/west bike path in and out. If you make it here in the next few month, I'll buy you lunch. Btw, do you have any experience with product development? ....any novel consumer and/or medical product design?

We will all buy you a beer. Indeed, the beloved "74th Street Ale House" is a couple blocks from Walker's. Finest reuben sandwich you will likely ever eat.

Ballard is a nice area of town, but like Scooter said, it can be difficult coming and going since there aren't a lot of roads in and out.
There's plenty of residential in ballard, so living there and avoiding a commute wouldn't be hard, as long as you can afford it.

No development work for me. Strictly hardware and related support, almost completely focused on IBM's AS/400 (iSeries, i5, i). I manage the datacenter for a development lab and support 40+ developers on 30+ logical servers.

Within 10 minutes of Ballard you can find houses ranging from $350K to $6M.

And just so you don't miss MN too much, there's a place about 3 blocks from there that serves Leinenkugel's and deep fried cheese curds....but expect to pay four bucks for the Leinies!!

I have a feeling housing may be the killer. I'll need to have several things fall in to place for something like this to work out, and housing is just one of them.

Lets see... my current place is 3br/4ba, 2800sq-ft, attached 2.5 car garage on 2.5 acres 20 minutes from work. Can I find something like that for oh say; 250k?

No. But your power bill will be Much less. (if that helps)

It might, my current gas and electric bill are 300 a month combined on an 'even-pay' plan.

Sure you could find that around here, about 50 miles east on I-90, but your commute would be shorter if you just fly from MN everyday.:D

ballard is nothing compared to downtown. depends where you commute from. there are back ways with less traffic. a bit far from I-5 though, but not a big deal really.