On my commute back this week, I walked from 22nd street station to the Mission (22nd and Guerrero) over 17th street. In the past I walked back over 22nd street (over 22nd street), over Cesar Chavez, but team mates said that 17th was nicer - so I tried it.

According to Google Maps, this walk would take me 67 minutes, compared to the 64 minutes it said for the Chavez route, and 47 minutes for the route over 22nd street.

👆 Route over 17th street

👆 Route over Cesar Chavez

👆 Route over 22nd street

Thing is: those latter routes actually took me 50 minutes and 45 minutes respectively, so the Google Maps predictions are not very reliable. So let’s see how it ended up…

While Google Maps recommended taking Pensylvania avenue from the station, I did took Indiana street, as it is much flatter. This left the route was again mostly flat, even flatter than over Chavez, and I walked the 2.9 mile route in 55 minutes. Time to update the table I made last time:

Route	Distance	Time
22nd st	1.8 miles	45 min
Chavez	2.8 miles	50 min
	+55%	+11%
17th st	2.9 miles	55 min
	+61%	+22%

So this route is significantly slower, but… is it nicer like my team mates had said?

The first stretch over Indiana is mostly walking parallel to the 280 and new’ish apartment buildings.

Then I crossed eastwards under 280 at Mariposa, which is a bit of a time waster due to all the traffic light. Nothing bad, though it may look a bit intimidating at first.

Then there’s a lovely small park on the southernmost part of Pensylvania (right next to the Caltrain track and 280), before I turned onto 17th street.

17th street has seen (and still is seeing) some major redevelopment. The separated bike line is seeing good use, and there are lot of pedestrians at the bottom of Potrero Hill too. Yeah yeah… you don’t see that in this pic, as otherwise I’d have had to remove all of those folks.

17th is definitely more pedestrian and bike friendly than Chavez, but I’m not sure how much that matters when I’m walking on my own and mostly listening to an audio-book.

After passing under the 101 and by Franklin Square park (pictured above) I ended up on the same route that I walked for years. So here I did wiggle my way through the Mission based on what traffic lights let me keep going with the fewest stops.

Oh, and this north-eastern part of the Mission is called Mission Creek - although I doubt most people who live there know it by that name. 🤷

As said the walk took me 55 minutes, which isn’t too much longer than the route over Chavez, and it was nice to pass under 101 rather than over it. But it is adding up to take significantly longer than the original route over 22nd. 🤔

Any other routes I should try? Sound off with the links at the top!

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For completeness: here’s the height profiles for all three routes too:

👆 Height profile over 17th street; the bump in the middle is going under 101 - but still uphill.

👆 Height profile over Cesar Chavez; the bump in middle is going over 101 - and quite a bit steeper than the route above.

👆 Height profile over 22nd street; the big bump in the middle is going over Potrero Hill, after which the 101 is just on the way down. 😊

I’m not sure why the end height is so different for each of them, given that I end it at the same spot each time. 🤷

Also see my other posts in this series:

• Walking 22nd street from Guerrero to the CalTrain station (over 22nd street) August 2, 2024
• Walking from 22nd street station to the Mission over Cesar Chavez

And further commuter stories:

• CalTrain from San Francisco to Mountain View July 31, 2024
• Bay Wheels e-bike from the Mission to the 22nd street CalTrain station August 5, 2024
• Regular Bay Wheels bike from the Mission to the 22nd street CalTrain station August 7, 2024
• Electric CalTrain from San Francisco to Mountain View October 8, 2024

And this article New York Times Discovers ‘Mission Creek’ Neighborhood. Oops… it’s been Mission Creek over a decade already apparently. 🙊