Arriving
Getting Here, and Then Getting Around the Valley
Almost everybody who reads this publication is arriving from somewhere else to look at something they cannot see at home. This page is about the arriving, and about the awkward part afterwards, which is moving between places that were never laid out for visitors.
The awkward truth about this subject and transport
The places this publication writes about are not connected to each other in a way that suits a visitor. They were laid out for freight, so the road pattern serves trucks and the rail pattern serves trains, and the pedestrian is a late arrival with no particular claim on either.
That has one consequence worth planning around: two vantage points that look close together on a map can be separated by a channel with no crossing between them. A quarter mile as the gull flies becomes two miles by road, over a bridge, through a junction. Work out your crossings before you work out your walking.
Arriving by air
One field serves the city, west of downtown, and it connects onward through the usual hubs. That is all this publication has to say about it, because we are not in the business of comparing services and we do not name carriers.
What we can do is put a search in front of you. It is below, it is run by an outside booking service rather than by us, and the disclosure is printed with it rather than hidden on another page.
Look up a flight
Type two letters and the field offers places from a list that ships with this page. Nothing about you leaves the browser until you press the button.
The search on this page is run by an outside booking service. Any reservation and any payment happens with that service and not here. This publication may be paid a commission on a booking that goes through, and what you pay is the same either way. The disclaimer says the same thing at length.
Arriving by road
The interstates cross this valley, which is not incidental to the subject: the viaducts that carry them are among the best vantage points in the city precisely because a road that had to cross a working channel had to get high enough to do it.
If you drive in, one piece of advice specific to this subject. Parking on the valley floor is mostly informal, industrial and unmarked, and a car left somewhere ambiguous on an industrial street is a car you will worry about. Leave it up on the level street grid and come down on foot.
Arriving by rail or coach
Both exist, both arrive near the downtown side of the channel, and both put you within walking distance of the first two steps of a first visit. Nothing else in this publication needs saying about them, and we deliberately do not write essays about transport interchanges: that is somebody else's subject and it is well covered.
Moving around once you are here
| What you want to do | How it actually works |
|---|---|
| Two spans in one outing | On foot, if they are on the same bank. Check the crossing first |
| Viaduct sidewalk to valley floor | Steep, and further than it looks from above. Allow more than you think |
| Along the channel | There is no continuous walk. The bank is private in stretches and industrial in the rest |
| Out to the mouth | Wheels to the nearest street end, then a long walk with no shelter |
| Between banks | Only where there is a bridge, and only where that bridge has a sidewalk |
The single most useful habit is checking whether a bridge has a sidewalk before you plan to cross it. Several here do not, and a bridge with no sidewalk on a road with truck traffic is not a bridge you can walk over.
What we do not offer
No tours, no guides, no tickets, no packages, no accommodation and no transport of any kind. This publication is reading. If you want somebody to take you round, that is a service and this is not one.
The only exception on the whole site is the search above, and it is somebody else's service. The disclaimer and the terms of use both say so, and the privacy policy says what happens when you use it.