Inman News today highlighted the Walk Score site, which is a really cool tool with a simple yet increasingly important purpose …
How walkable is your community? Any ideas?
The idea of Walk Score is to determine the distance between an address and other walkable locations – like coffee shops, restaurants and grocery stores – and calculates a score for each location. A score of < 25 and you'll probably have to drive, but as gas prices continue to climb I think this is a pretty cool tool for all of us. I know I was surprised at some of the results:
- I looked up my old house, (15 rating)
- and then I looked up my new house, (42 rating)
- and then I looked up a downtown Blacksburg building. (80 rating)
Pretty neat, and awfully useful. Think home buyers wouldn't use this to compare neighborhoods? While it seems simple and trite, I think it has potential to be another supporting factor to urban core renewal.
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Darla, that’s one of the limitations right now with the software – it doesn’t account for those types of things. To “really” be useful, they’re going to have to resolve that issue.
I just don’t see how municipalities are going to be able to avoid the issue. Mass transport options are going to have to pick up momentum in communities like ours, I just don’t see any other way around it. The Huckleberry Trail is nice, sure, but it doesn’t break off into the more urbanized areas to make it really effective. SmartWay Bus is a good idea, but there aren’t enough stops between the end points to make it useful for large-scale ridership. Truthfully, in the Blacksburg/Christiansburg/Radford “triad” I think the best chance of succeeding at mass transit is the BT (or some hybrid of it). They could serve THOUSANDS more customers throughout the Valley by offering service everywhere. Who wouldn’t wait 15 minutes for a bus? I would, if it meant I didn’t have to drive to work. Mrs. NRVLiving has started walking to work on nice days (6 miles roundtrip) because it gives her quiet time, but she’s petitioned for a BT stop in our neighborhood because there are several riders in the subdivision who’d use it. Ridership throughout the Valley is there – I believe – if someone with the resources could make it happen.
The BT just seems to make sense because they’ve got the infrastructure in place, they’ve got the system and they know how to work the federal funding angle. My $.02.
Darla, that’s one of the limitations right now with the software – it doesn’t account for those types of things. To “really” be useful, they’re going to have to resolve that issue.
I just don’t see how municipalities are going to be able to avoid the issue. Mass transport options are going to have to pick up momentum in communities like ours, I just don’t see any other way around it. The Huckleberry Trail is nice, sure, but it doesn’t break off into the more urbanized areas to make it really effective. SmartWay Bus is a good idea, but there aren’t enough stops between the end points to make it useful for large-scale ridership. Truthfully, in the Blacksburg/Christiansburg/Radford “triad” I think the best chance of succeeding at mass transit is the BT (or some hybrid of it). They could serve THOUSANDS more customers throughout the Valley by offering service everywhere. Who wouldn’t wait 15 minutes for a bus? I would, if it meant I didn’t have to drive to work. Mrs. NRVLiving has started walking to work on nice days (6 miles roundtrip) because it gives her quiet time, but she’s petitioned for a BT stop in our neighborhood because there are several riders in the subdivision who’d use it. Ridership throughout the Valley is there – I believe – if someone with the resources could make it happen.
The BT just seems to make sense because they’ve got the infrastructure in place, they’ve got the system and they know how to work the federal funding angle. My $.02.
Cool site, Jeremy. I looked up my house, and while the score was a respectable 48, the problem is that most of the retailers/businesses listed as “walkable” are actually in areas that are decidedly NOT walker-friendly. There are no sidewalks in a large part of Christiansburg, and definitely not on any of the routes I would have to walk to get to these places. While I appreciate the proximity of these businesses to my home, I am not going to walk on the shoulder of a major highway (or a smaller one, for that matter) to get to them. I agree that with high gas prices, walking is a great option. When will our towns and counties make walking a SAFER option? And, I suppose, at what cost?
Cool site, Jeremy. I looked up my house, and while the score was a respectable 48, the problem is that most of the retailers/businesses listed as “walkable” are actually in areas that are decidedly NOT walker-friendly. There are no sidewalks in a large part of Christiansburg, and definitely not on any of the routes I would have to walk to get to these places. While I appreciate the proximity of these businesses to my home, I am not going to walk on the shoulder of a major highway (or a smaller one, for that matter) to get to them. I agree that with high gas prices, walking is a great option. When will our towns and counties make walking a SAFER option? And, I suppose, at what cost?