The good news: My address in the West Nineties of Manhattan scores 95 -- I live in a walker's paradise! Hooray! Now the bad news: An increasing proportion of my neighbors drive. My block is choked with parked SUVs. The traffic now resembles midtown -- 30 years ago there were far fewer cars. The sad fact is that the more affluent the neighborhood gets, the more people drive. They are drawn to the richness of a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood. But they can't be stopped from bringing their cars here. This is a source of daily anger and torment to me.

Thanks for showing this!

I checked our house, and the walk score was 26, which is not walkable. I live in a suburb of Atlanta, not New York.

The reason we bought our house here is because it is on the edge of the University where my husband works. He walks to work every day, and my children walked when they took classes there. Many of our neighbors work on campus, and walk to work.

There is a bus stop on campus, so our house is walking distance of a bus stop. (This is rare in the Atlanta suburbs.) This was another reason we moved here. The map doesn't have that information.

There are other things the campus has, including eating places, concerts, a large library, and a book store, but the map doesn't include these. My impression is that it is looking only at commercial establishments.

I think the idea of the walkablilty score is a good one. My example shows that there are a few things that get left out. If you are looking at the neighborhood, you will probably want to combine a real-life look around with what the map tells you.

Mine is about 80. I live in midtown Houston, 2 blocks from light rail (which I take to work). Large grocery store next block over. As far as living in a mostly unwalkable city, this is about as good as it gets. I could conceivably get by without a car altogether (my girlfriend and I share a single car.)

Personally I think zoning should be disposed of altogether. If you want to talk about market-based solutions... dumping zoning allows density to increase very quickly in neighborhoods, in a de-facto mixed use manner, where people want to live, while still keeping prices realistic. Houston has no zoning; as a result, neighborhoods very quickly respond to demand by building townhomes, condos, etc.

I like this as a way to find things when out of town. If you are on business or on vacation it quickly lists all the things around you in categories. Even to find stuff in your own community that you may not have known about.

My score is 68 for a small town of <4000. I hope WalkScore keeps improving, it is an excellent idea. I should say I live two blocks from a train depot, but alas, cars are still king and passenger rail is only a gleaming possibility here in 30 year old metro transit plans which gather dust.

To my surprise, my Manhattan Beach address in CA scored an "unwalkable" 48. Yet most of what I need day to day is in downtown Manhattan Beach, .82 mile away.

What is missing is how pleasant that .82 mile is to walk or to bike ride. In many parts of Southern Cal I would not want to walk half that distance. But here, it's great.

My score was 71, in Mill Valley CA (Bay Area)--
It missed several opportunities, a major public school, and Whole Foods Market a few blocks away--

I posted this link a month or two ago in a DrumBeat. Before, the site would often be clogged and give no result.

It is also faulty in not including transit access. And some other details as well.

None the less, a useful tool.

I got 77 in the Lower Garden District of New Orleans. A recent TODer visit can confirm how walkable it is (except for movie theaters).

Best Hopes,

Alan

http://reddit.com/info/2iulh/comments

if you are so inclined... :)

The data used to calculate the score is quite poor. In my test, they listed a closed, small, drugstore while ignoring the three large chain stores within a half mile. They also listed a small mom and pop grocery while ignoring the supermarket one block further.

In fact I specifically bought my house where I did because of the ability to walk to all the important local merchants. It is also within walking distance of the LIRR which I took to work for many years.

One of the reasons I stay put is that having close by shopping and other services means that there is less need to rely on driving as one gets older. I see plenty of my fellow retirees walking to and from the same stores. Several of the nearby assisted living facilities that have sprung up allow for walking or have a bus to take people in a group. This is all very efficient.

I'm in Great Neck, NY which is the first town past the NYC border on Long Island. I'd call it pseudo-suburbs. The local government likes "mature" suburbs instead. They are now doing planning as to what to do next. Mature suburbs don't have the same growth patterns and influx of young people as new areas.

What I notice, in addition to the crow fies issues is that it does not know which roads have sidewalks. I walk to the store from time to time but not with the kids because part of the route puts pedestrians out in the middle of the road.

Chris

It is an interesting site. I got a 93 in midtown Toronto.

Many of the comments show how rough an estimate this is and others indicate that while a rough estimate, it is still valuable. Of course, it doesn't factor in everything, that is what eyes and ears are for. I picked my current address in St Louis Park, and previous addresses in Minneapolis. Now one of the areas which came up as highly walkable used to be a very walkable neighborhood, but that changed as drugs and crime moved in. I used to walk 3 blocks to the grocery store or take the bus to a store and carry groceries home on the bus. Not much fun, but it was doable. I also visited the neighborhood where I grew up last night, and remembered the corner stores which had been replaced with industrial buildings

Interesting topic.

In many urban areas, non-motorized travelers have to often fight through a maze to get from point A to point B. I would suggest people map out the artificial corridors and barriers that surround themselves.

Here is a maze that I have to escape from, the star is home base, all the white lines are freeways, impassable industrial areas, and the occasional river or lake. The only passages are through the gates shown:

In a car it is much more straightforward.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2195538.ece

From the article above, it is better to drive than to walk for the environment.

I entered my 100 000 town in the Czech Republic. Surprisingly, it found the place on map, but then rated the walkability as "Worst". Which is nonsense, as most towns and cities in the Czech Republic are eminently walkable.

Well, for me it said the nearest hardware store was "McCormick Paints". Great if you need paint or a paintbrush. Not of much use if you need anything else.

The nearest library was "Ernst & Young". WTF?? That's an accounting firm.

In a way I am more interested in what is bikable. I have a Whole Foods about 3 miles away, and I have a new pannier for my bike.

The sooner the US realises that it must adopt a strong planning system based on sustainability the better. In the UK we have town centres first policies, where a sequential test is required for out of town shopping centres to proove that they cannot be incorperated within or on the fringe of existing centres, as whole units or split into smaller units. Locally important shopping parades are protected from conversion to other uses. Residential development is limited to areas that are served by public transport. New development that is not served is generally only allowed as an urban extension with developers providing bus services, schools, libraries, employment space, shops, recreation space, etc. and the developments must be of a density capable of sustaining those services. The UK is also now requring in many places that 10% of projected energy consumption of new major developments is provided on-site with renewable energy, the high cost of this incentivises energy efficiency measures to reduce the obligation.

But the US has no federal policy guidance regarding planning and each state chooses its own way, many with no planning whatsoever. This must change if the US wants to create sustainable communities that are peak oil proof. Developers hate it, so you need ballsy radical uncorrupt politicians to make it happen. The US is unfortunately bereft of such a thing and democracy virtually defunct given the infiltration by corporations via the intense, unscrutinised lobbying and funding of politics in the US.

"Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there." (Aldous Huxley "Island" 1962, p38)

Manhatten my eye, check out this little doll of a city....

http://walkscore.com/get-score.php?street=2nd+and+Main+Street+Louisville...

Sometimes we don't know how good we have it.....:-)

RC
Southern isn't a place, it's a state of mind...:-)

Restaurants, coffee shops, bars, movie theaters, schools, bookstores, fitness, clothing & music stores - I have no desire to go to any of those. Guess I'm not a very good consumer. (well, occasionally to a music store that sells guitar strings).

The site gave me a walkability of 12.

However, immediately in front of my house is a bus stop which runs directly to the middle of my closest town, currently runs every hour, and takes 10 minutes each way. For that matter, the same bus will take me to the beach if I stay on it 15 minutes. I average about 500 miles on my car each year.

But there's a much bigger "however". Post-peak a few years, I see NO reason that any of the stores in my local town will have anything inside them. Indeed, no reason for there to BE a town there. The location of many US towns seems to be based on nothing more than random aggregation of population which has been logical for placement of distribution nodes. Why in the world whould I expect the town to still be there in the future, much less its infrastructure of movie theaters, coffee shops, and grocery stores stocked with just-in-time produce shipments from far-off lands?

What do we all think we'll be walking to?

This is funny...my downtown Evanston Illinois address gets a score of 100 -- two better than my old Upper West Side address in NYC! My old address was definitely more walkable, but we are getting along just fine in Evanston without a car -- we were "real" New Yorkers, and we let our drivers licenses expire, and we're too lazy to get new ones.

One general point I'd like to make is that the absolute number one, most important single attribute of a walkable neighborhood is to have a supermarket. If you have a supermarket that is very close, it drastically cuts down on car trips.

The other point, and something that might be worth a more in-depth analysis, is, how many neighborhoods are truly walkable? By which I define -- could you get along without a car? I didn't know about downtown Evanston until we got here-- and it probably helps, although does not guarantee walkability, that it is home to a major university (Northwestern). I also lived near campus at Berkeley with no need for a car. Are there other areas around the country that can be lived in without a car?

My house received a score of 0. I agree completely with that score: if I wanted to purchase the things I need on a daily basis. Instead, it doesn't account for the fact that my workshop is better equipped than a hardware store, my farm is a grocery store, and my home is pretty much a library.

I would like to see a chart that asks people (over the age of 25) where they live, and where they grew up. What's the sense in having schools, libraries and stores in a tight grouping if nobody wants to stay there in the first place? Many places I have lived didn't deserve to have the libraries and schools they had, because the places were populated with idiot consumers anyway. Now most of those places have been 'improved' with even more strip malls and TV stadium churches. Apparently, war is good for Gods and fast food nations.

Well, where I live in Jersey City one can certainly live without a car very easily, and many do. We have a car, but use it mostly to leave the city and go hiking on weekens andand vacations. The car is parked 4 or 5 blocks away, and sometimes I have to go and turn it over so the battery doesn't die.

One of the things we use it for is to visit my daughter who lives on a commune in W Va. The walkability index for the commune is probably as low as ours is high. But if things really get rough, where would I rather be? They grow a lot of their own vegetables, raise several different kinds of animals, have a pond to swim in, abut a national forest and are close to a state forest. So you can't get anywhere from there without a car, but there's the potential to survive without going anywhere.

O dear. This thread reminds me that we are seriously doomed. I have to go away now, for a long time. Byby.

I live 15mins walk from central london, have three underground railway that each take 5mins to get into central london, am walking distance to about 15bus services, half of which operate 24hrs/7 days a week, and am walking distance to Europe's busiest mainline rail junction. Yet, my neighbourhood, apparently is mediocre in terms of walkability. There are also about five schools within walking distance. The search engine only picked up about a quarter of the businesses in the area. It takes me 10mins by underground to get to Europe's busiest shoopping high Street (Oxford Street) for goodness sake.

The initial comments about density are misplaced. If where I lived wasn't dense, it could not support mass transit, and local businesses/services don't thrive where there aren't people.

"Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there." (Aldous Huxley "Island" 1962, p38)

Clarendon, a suburb of Washingon DC scores an 85. Probably about right, you don't need a car here. We could use some more medical and we lost our hardware store recently (converted to restaurant)so it's not ideal. The streets are still too car-oriented in some places, making walking less comfortable but the score doesn't consider that.

Mixed-use proximity is the main consideration of this ranking it seems and that is a good basic measure.

Last month my Fed Hill apartment got an 83, but now it is up to 91. I wonder what changed ...

How walkable is my neighborhood? A half a mile to the nearest neighbor. 2 miles to the highway. 7 more to town.
Another 15 to visit Todd. I could probably do it in a day.

A couple of comments:

1) As several people have noted, the database is inaccurate & incomplete. I live one block from a park, it has the nearest one being 2.36 miles.

2) I live about 3/4 miles from the center of my small town, and almost all of the services it picked up were located there. Because they were 3/4 miles away, I only got a walkability score of 34. However, if we are talking about walkability, isn't there something to be said for having a lot of services clustered near each other? If I walk downtown, I am likely to go to the public library and two or three different shops. It does matter that the walking distance between all of them is minimal. If they were all located a shorter distance from my home, but all in different directions from each other, it might actually require MORE walking to get to all of them.

This is not so much of an issue in a dense urban CBD, but it does become one in smaller communities.

3)Most of the streets in my small town don't have sidewalks, but the speed limits and traffic density are low so that is OK. I can still safely walk to downtown. If I had to get there via a busy, dangerous thoroughfare, it wouldn't matter how close downtown was. Walkability is at least as much about how safe it is to get from point A to point B on foot as it is about the distance between point A and point B.

The website won't even recognize our address, nor the older addresses surrounding it. On the map of our area, it missed significant schools and groceries and post offices. This development is about 10-15 years old and more stores and residences are still being built here.... I used to think it was very car dependent because our preferred stores are further away. But now that I think about it, in a pinch we could probably manage here without a car.

But not post carbon era. Where are all those stores going to get [cheap] supplies shipped from? And if the economy crashes, most income to buy from those stores will dry up anyway. So the stores might not exist.

A post peak walkability map would address where to get supplies that were more locally and sustainably produced. For instance, if you live near a tourist center that replicates old fashioned methods of doing things, you'd at least have the nearby knowledge how to do it. For example colonial Williamsburg or something similar. Also, if you lived near a navigable river, then you might have access to tradable goods from further away.

Happiness is... a peak-nik in his victory garden!

This Walkscore posting generated excellent comments. It misses some very important destinations like public transit stops, places of worship, day care centers, etc. But critics should remember that Walkscore is a brand new, rough-draft FREE tool that some guys threw together. Moreover, the developers were very clear about its shortcomings and their willingness to incorporate suggested improvements. And the name itself reminds us of its focus - it's not "BikeScore" or "TransitScore" or "FarmScore" or "SelfSufficiencyScore". I challenge anyone to name a better tool for estimating the walkability of those communities in which the vast majority of Americans live - people who, incidentally, purchase most of life's necessities and are more than nominally involved socially.

And what a great free tool it is! I live in a village of 8,535 people, have served on the village board, and have closely followed development and zoning issues, including the drafting and approval of the village's Comprehensive Plan and its more-than-one-inch-thick Zoning Ordinance. These documents cost the village hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There is a good deal of happy talk in these documents - especially the Comprehensive Plan - about objectives like "reducing absolute reliance on the automobile", building more walkable neighborhoods, establishing bicycling networks, etc. The Zoning Ordinance has lots of details on street widths, lot sizes, setbacks, minimum parking requirements, and historic character in the downtown.

But Walkscore - with all of its current shortcomings and raw edges - is already a much more valuable tool for community planning than the type of formal documents my municipality uses at present. Why? Because Walkscore absolutely nails the most important factor in walkable communities - PROXIMITY OF DESTINATIONS. Yes, factors like public safety are essential too, but without proximity all the public safety in the world won't get people to walk two and three miles to the grocery store.

My fervent hope is that Walkscore developers will evolve it into a full-featured commercial product, for sale to community planners. It will inject much needed REALISM into the development process.

Meanwhile those of us who like our isolation need to remember that the ACT OF PARKING destroys, undermines, and prevents walkability everywhere else, for everyone else.

>> It is absurd to call driving a personal choice. <<

Not when America has eviscerated most of her historic downtowns to accommodate the motorist. Not when the private automobile remains a top contributor to global warming. Not when our nation, having burned through most of her own once-abundant reserves of cheap oil in the historic blink of an eye, has invaded and occupied other lands for more. Check slides 15 and 62 here:

http://t8web.lanl.gov/people/rajan/energy_RG_06.pdf

Peace begins with cobwebs on gas pump handles.

Hans Noeldner

"Civilization is the presence of enlightened self-restraint"

I laughed out loud when I saw the example you used in the Walkscore: The Rocky Mountain Institute is so easy to make fun of. Snowmass does in fact have transit service to Aspen through the Roaring Fork Transit Authority. It's a couple of miles to the nearest bus stop from RMI, but that's a bikeable distance in the summer. I believe there might be transit service to Glenwood Springs from Snowmass, also.

I always buy a house with the main criteria being walkability and distance to work. I have lived in Denver, Eugene, OR, and now Lincoln, NE. The interesting aspect is that I always end up in the old part of town. Any new development is not walkable, or amenable to mass transit and never will be. Something must be done about land development practices. If one used GIS to contour the walkability (perhaps an enhanced walkability coefficient that incorporates comments posted here) in any city, the coefficient would decrease away from the older parts of town with small business districts and streets with sidewalks that are on a grid instead of a maze. Bike paths follow creeks and rivers and are typically not commuter or transportation routes for shoppers. Changes can be forced by the real estate consumer and ideas can be presented by engineers and land use planners as well as regulators and those on commissions.

D

Derek Ryter, PG, Ph.D.
Professional Geologist