Planning

On my bike ride to work, from Mountain View to Cupertino, I usually start on the Stevens Creek Trail, and I can take either one of two routes after crossing El Camino Real.

One of them takes me through the red circled region on the map posted below, while the other takes me through the blue.



I will call the blue region (the "circle" around it isn't closed since the region extends off the map) "ecocity Sunnyvale". It has actual bike lanes, streets connect, so that things a close distance apart can actually be walked or biked to, and the area seems to be fairly mixed-use (schools, businesses, etc) for a residential / sprawling ranch houses area.

The red region, while superficially similar by the map, is an entirely different beast. The dashed green line going through it on the bicycle map isn't so much a bike path, as it is an unmarked route through a maze of suburban cul-de-sacs. Having successfully laid out the streets in such a way as to prevent cars from cutting through this neighborhood, whoever designed this area also managed to prevent cyclists and pedestrians from taking any sort of sensible straight cut-across, while simultaneously zoning the entire region purely residential.