There seems to be a lot of urban blog buzz about Walk Score. This is a website that calculates the walkability of your home or neighborhood based on your address. The application is kinda cool, although is not completely accurate as it relies on the completeness of Google map information and some businesses and amenities are not listed. The authors call it “an approximation” of the walkability of an area. And they admit that certain factors like steep hills or a busy road creating a barrier to walking are not taken into account.
My house scored an 88 / 100. Given my neighborhood is known as being pedestrian oriented and highly walkable (and I can’t think of any amenities that are not within a few blocks), I wondered what it would take to score 100. I tested a bunch of addresses for places I thought might earn it, but they came in at less than 88. According to the Walk Score website blog, a condo complex in Seattle achieved 100.
So, what’s your score ? What do you think about the index?
1 
44 
5
This index is laughably bad. My residence north of High Park scored 40. The data base is very incomplete, and in many cases wrong. I don’t even recognize most of the restaurants and I have two No Frills within easy walking distance that are not even listed. It needs a lot of work.
Agree with Steve. What missing is quality. Some of the places mentioned in my neighborhood I would rarely go to. And they miss the new. It looks like they just consulted last year’s yellow pages. They need to somehow talk to some locals. But it’s an intresting concept and a good place to start if you’re looking to buy a home in a walkable neighborhood.
Because it’s a statistical index of almost any place in North America, adding locals comments might be tough (although maybe a wiki concept could work here). But perhaps one could cross reference with something from the census — in Canada they track the usual way people travel to work. So, the number of “on foot” or “on transit” or “by bike” responses might be helpful and could be integrated.
my seattle house next to the university of washington and within 1 mile of every category listed scored only 54 / 100. I wonder what they consider walkable distance. I did rcognize most of the retailers and have partonized many of them on foot.
Hi Fred,
You make a good point. I’ll try to find out what they consider walkable (it may be calculated by degrees of walkability; 1 block would therefore score higher than 1 mile in distance).
update: From the Walk Score website:
How it Works
Walk Score™ uses a patent-pending system to calculate the walkability of an address based on:
* The distance to walkable locations near an address.
* Calculating a score for each of these locations.
* Combining these scores into one easy to read Walk Score.
From further reading, it also sounds like places of work are important to the walkability score.
My walk score is 45… I was rather upset with it. And I was surprised to know that there is another score called drive score
to evaluate my house. I found the way to calculate it online at Fizber site (http://drivescore.fizber.com/). I’ve got much better results – 89.
Hmmm…my results for drive score were 45. What’s odd is that it only seems to look for national chain businesses like Home Depot, Starbucks, etc., and is even missing the closest ones to my house. But a Home Hardware store is closer, and there are at least 6 coffee places closer to my house than the starbucks (which is only 6 blocks, not 2 miles like drive score said).
I just checked out a range of neighborhoods where I live, have lived, work, and have worked. The methodology definitely needs lots of work. It would be nice to measure walking routes along street paths rather than as a crow flies, and the ease of street crossings for pedestrians should be considered. I’m not sure I agree on quality of businesses, but at least some distinction that a superette doesn’t count as a supermarket should be included. In the scheme of things, though, I felt that all were roughly correct in the scale of walkability.
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