How walkable is your address?
My home's Walk Score: 77 out of 100 or Very Walkable
Walk Score calculates your home or potential home’s walkability rating “based on the distance from your house to nearby amenities.”
My Traverse City address scores a “Very Walkable” 77 out of 100. This is mainly due to Glen’s grocery store, but also due to a few restaurants, the library and parks that are within a half-mile. As an amenity gets further away than a mile, the points awarded to your site disappear. The result is that many places I frequent like downtown, although walkable, just fall out of range to count by 2 or 3 tenths of a mile.
I typed in a few addresses from Traverse City and the highest score I found was an 89 out of 100 for an address in the 400 block of State St.
There wasn’t a “Walkers’ Paradise”, over 90, in the Traverse City.
There are some obvious flaws (it doesn’t recognize poor infrastructure), but a useful starting point. Walk Score is now seeking comments on how best to improve on the algorithm at www.walkscore.org so we’ll revisit this in the future.
For now, we want to know…
How Walkable is Your Address?
What’s missing from your 1 mile radius?
How would your Walkscore improve if it valued amenities within 2 miles?
My address in the old westside of Ann Arbor gets an 86… when I was living in Portland Oregon my address had a walk score of 96… and my front door featured a Streetcar stop.
Generally for something to be highly walkable for the average person, it needs to be reached in about 5 minutes… about a quarter mile.
I only scored 63 and I walk EVERYWHERE!!! It makes me question why people who are living in neighborhoods with higher scores aren’t walking. Also, if you don’t put a street address in, it gives you a score of 98 and defaults at an addy on State between Cass and Union. I wish it would let me choose which amenities I wanted. Just because I can walk to a place doesn’t mean I want to. I should be able to priotritize the things I want to walk to.
I was shocked to get a score of 69 – below the TC average. Sorry, but I don’t buy it. While I am in full agreement that it could (and should) be better, I guess I’m questioning the model.
I emailed Walk Score awhile back about the model and distances slightly greater than a mile. A reply is below. Basically, the model is designed for the average person, as Peter mentioned, a measly .25 mile. I met an elderly woman walking her errands yesterday and she was easily a mile from her house in slab town–need more like her! But my score is higher due to a couple of locations nearby, although they are a pain in the arse to walk to…ever try walking Garfield Ave?
Thanks for comments. Keep them coming. And contact walk score with suggestions. They are seeking input.
91 out of 100 baby! Woo-hoo! Go me!
I’ve lived downtown for about 3-years now. Love it.
oh yeah… I live at 147 E. 9th St. Apt.2. Right behind the Old Town Playhouse. Big old Victorian home that has 4 units inside. It was built in the 1880′s and divided into apartments in the 1950′s. The owners live on the ground level. Their ultimate goal is to renovate and transform the house back into a single family home.