Our Neighborhood Walk Score
A couple of months ago, I came across a web site that works with Google Maps to evaluate how pedestrian-friendly our address is. The more amenities (shops, restaurants, grocers, parks, libraries, fitness centers. etc.) that you can reach within a reasonable radius, the higher your ‘walk score’. Up until recently, there was a glitch in the system that kept it from doing an accurate plot of where addresses were in Canada, but after I alerted them, they’ve fixed the problem (it involved some incorrect conversion of kilometers to miles, an issue that has been known to crash Mars probes, among other things). Now, it’s spot on, and I was pleased to see that our address has a walk score of 88 out of a possible 100.
When I checked our old address, Lilac Court in Cambridge, MA, at Walk Score, we actually had a slightly higher score of 95 (again, out of 100), but that decrease by 7 points hardly feels very significant. When I lived at 2 Chester Street, also in Cambridge, the score was 91, and in undergraduate school, when I lived at 616 Straight Street in Cincinnati, my score was 72. I think my all-time low score (a 0, of course) must have been when I lived on Forest Lawn Road, just outside of Rochester, New York. The closest place to there, on foot, was a bar, well over a mile away along a road with no sidewalk.
As Walk Score points out, “Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.” It’s probably worth adding that these days, with the price of gas being what it is, that it’s clearly good for your wallet as well.
When we first moved here and didn’t have a car, I lost a lot of weight, mainly from the amount of walking we did. We walked everywhere, both for shopping and to get to know the area. Despite not getting to see as much of Vancouver as we might have, I certainly was healthier. After nearly a year of commuting (mostly by car) to IBM, I really put on the pounds, and it’s tough to get them back off again.
Try out their site, and see how your neighborhood fares. In most cases, you’ll probably be able to predict the score, but once or twice I was surprised by either how much lower or higher the score was from what I’d thought it would be.
11 Comments to “Our Neighborhood Walk Score”
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West End Bob
Posted: May 30th, 2008 at 5:47 am1We got a 95 score, David.
If the businesses were more accurate, I’ll bet we would have had a 100. This is exactly why we tried to buy in the West End.
Once we get up there, we’re getting rid of the car to get slim and trim, too .…
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Maktaaq
Posted: May 30th, 2008 at 10:39 pm2A 27, the exact same as my old address — this can’t be right, the old address was pretty dismal while this one is far, far better. Yikes…
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David Drucker
Posted: May 31st, 2008 at 11:57 am3Bob — I forgot to mention parking (if you have no car, you don’t need it; if you don’t move it from the place you had found or if it’s in a parkade). This takes a fair amount off of travel time, and in some rare cases, can make up for the time saved by driving!
Maktaaq — I suspect they aren’t including some newer businesses and also the Skytrain station that’s far closer to your new address. Come to think of it, nearness to mass transit should be factored in across the board, although it may take the focus off ‘walkability’ versus ‘livability without using a car to get everywhere’.
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Bethany
Posted: May 31st, 2008 at 1:01 pm4We’ve got the 95 here at Lilac Court, but it lists a bookstore that is gone, a library that is really a laboratory and a mysterious drug store we’ve never heard of…
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David Drucker
Posted: May 31st, 2008 at 2:14 pm5Bethany — If you get a moment, send Walkscore an email about the errors. I kept after them for the problem in Vancouver, (which was due to the kilometer-to-mile conversion, although I didn’t know that) and they did fix it. The data problems may or may not be within their control. At any rate, at least they’ll know and can pass on the issues to whoever might be able to update the data.
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pingback:
Posted: Jun 6th, 2008 at 3:21 pm6The Walk Score « Random Thoughts of a Student of the Environment[…] @ 3:21 pm Tags: Vancouver, Walk Score I had read about the Walk Score a few months ago, and now hat tips are very much due to David Drucker, who reminded me about it. I would say that Mount Pleasant has a very decent Walk Score (78 out of 100) although I know that […]
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Jonathon Narvey
Posted: Jun 6th, 2008 at 10:25 pm7I can’t imagine living in a neighborhood with a low “walk score”. Oh, wait. I can. I lived there. It sucked.
Yup. I have to be in the thick of things. Besides, it’s better for the environment. And I hate driving anyway.
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David Drucker
Posted: Jun 7th, 2008 at 11:24 am8Hi Jonathon — It is interesting how quality of life seems to be linked with such a simple thing as walking. On the other hand, one person’s stroll to a café is another’s Urban Nightmare. Some people would describe a good walk as one along the beach or in a lush, wilderness trail. Perhaps the whole walk score thing needs to have 2 ‘flavors’; one for people who like to walk in the city, and one for those who like to walk in the countryside.
I know what you mean about driving. It always makes me laugh (and perhaps get a little angry) to see all of those car commercials, where the voice-over extols the pleasures of driving, and we see the car they are selling sailing over nearly empty roads, past attractive landscapes or city scenes (depending on the demographic). You never see much traffic (except for that goofy one for the car that bounces over it when the passengers get enough oomph behind it). Now, I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of commercials for how much gasoline a model saves — but again, it will not be stuck in traffic, where (except for the Prius, at present), you burn the most fossil fuel as the engine idles. The whole ‘car culture’ is still here, nevertheless.
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Raul
Posted: Jun 7th, 2008 at 4:30 pm9I’m sort of surprised at how low Mount Pleasant’s Walk Score is. 78 doesn’t seem like a lot. But its’ good though!
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Sandra
Posted: Jun 28th, 2008 at 3:45 am10My walk score is just 20 so as you see my present neighborhood
is not very walkable. This service can be especially useful
for those who are going to buy a house cause it can help to
estimate a particular location. But how often do we walk nowadays?
I ve found one more service called drive score at
http://drivescore.fizber.com/ With it one can see how close
establishments are by car. Homes are often located in an
area where restaurants, libraries, grocery stores,
hospitals and other businesses are easier to get to by car than on foot. -
trackback:
Posted: Jun 28th, 2008 at 3:43 pm11Your Kamloops...How Walkable is your (potential) Neighborhood.…..
Through David Drucker’s Loud Murmurs Blog in Vancouver, I found a great little site called Walk Score that allows folks to get some idea of how walkable different neighborhood are. It’s only one tool I would rely on, but still…
