Living Car Free - walkscore.com > car free home selection made easy!

Looky what I found !!! >> http://www.walkscore.com/ <<

My house only scored a 40 .. sux ... but I put in my work address downtown and I got a 77 !

No wonder I like working here !

Home 52
Work 74

This could be very useful when looking to move to an area you are unfamiliar with. My apartment scored an 85, but I already knew I was in a very walkable spot.

i think there was a thread before this a little while back...

my house is like a 17. But we ride & walk anyway

I love city life!

My place here is an 88. My place in Austin is only a 65. I don't really find a difference between the two (except that rent is about 1/2 as much in Austin.)

I love city life!

No kidding!

Home: 91
Work: 95

No joke, either. This is why a run-of-the-mill townhome down the street is going for $750K. Time to check out my parents' home...

Home: 43
Dad's work: 86

This is cool!

Okay, my apartment in college: 48. Funny, it doesn't take into account that campus was across the street. ;)

Home: 85
Work: 100

Home: 43
Work: It couldn't find it

That's a useful site, with some limitations.

Walkability isn't exactly the same as bikeability. If you're one mile away on low traffic streets from absolutely everything you need, the walkability score could be low but the bikeability might be outstanding.

Even for walking it missed a ton of stuff. I can rattle off a dozen places I regularly bike to that would be short walking distance and are not on that site. Cool idea though. I'd be interested in seeing a biking version.

Can't convince the search to cough up the old thread...but that thing has outdated as well as quite a bit of misinformation. It lists a stop and rob near my house as a grocery store and misses the 2 year old chain grocery store across the street. But it does give you a snap shot of what an area looks like.

FWIW: Country Home has a score of 2:p
City Home has a score of 68 and my wife's business which is 3 blocks away has a score of 65...go
figure:rolleyes:

Aaron:)

Looky what I found !!! >> http://www.walkscore.com/ <<

My house only scored a 40 .. sux ... but I put in my work address downtown and I got a 77 !

No wonder I like working here !

Yeah, but the database that drives this really sucks.

My nearest hardware store is "McCormick Paints". I know where that is - last time I was there I bought a 5-gallon bucket of paint. But I am not going to walk there and try and carry such a thing home.

The nearest school is a "Play & Learn" center. Day care, I suppose.

The nearest clothing is "Payless Shoes". Umm, yeah..

The nearest library is "Ernst & Young". Some accounting firm. Why is that in the database as a library???

According to the site, home is 27 and work is 73. According to their information, my home is not walkable. But most of what I need is within two kilometres of my home. It's not far to walk and it's even easier if I'm cycling. My day-to-day needs are all close to home.

You can sometimes find less expensive neighborhoods with good car free potential. There's no automatic way to find them, you have to do a lot of scouting and apply your local knowledge.

One way to do car free neighborhood prospecting is to start with retail strip clusters at the intersections of arterial roads. Concentrate on the ones with grocery stores. Look at the residential neighborhoods behind the strips. Concentrate on the ones that have the best bike access to the grocery and other retail stores that support your daily life. Scout the bikeability of the area in person, looking for MUPs, bike lanes, wide outside lanes, etc that let you cross the arterial roads and get out of the immediate neighborhood.

That's not a universal solution, but it's one good way to start.

Cool. The apartment I want to move into has a score of 98. But that's to be expected, since the apartment is literally right across the street from Seattle Center (that's where the Space Needle is for people unfamiliar with the area). I love the city as well. Boo suburbs :p

Ouch, my house got a 6 :-/ that's what I get for living out in a bedroom community.

I'll agree that it isn't very walkable, but it's quite bikable (if you've got a little time): 7 miles to work, 8 to the grocery store, 9 to the natural food store.

>Wow, I just checked the house I grew up in -- 0 out of 100 :-(

Mine came out as 55, but it should be higher. There are walkable destinations that the database didn't pick up on.

moms place got a 32, my last house in portland got a 77.

i think the score at my moms house should be lower though, because most of the places it says are close are located along or across a major traffic artery with 8 lanes of cars going 50+mph and no crosswalks. walking across or biking down that road is seriously dangerous especially during peak traffic hours.

Home 25
Work 94
Which is kinda surprising; I'd have given home a 1 and work a 100 (or higher if allowed).

My home scored 43. But it missed many of the closer places I walk to already. Most notably four resturaunts 1/2mi away, two grocery stores, a coffee shop and a privately owned convenience store which is only 1/4mi away.

That said, no one would consider this suburban sprawl a walkable or ped friendly area.

Also what is missed is my neighborhood has a free shuttle which runs every 15min that takes anyone from any pick up spot (you just flag them down) to anywhere on the route.
This is the service: http://www.tempe.gov/tim/Bus/Orbit.htm
This is the route of Mars which serves my neighborhood: http://www.tempe.gov/tim/Bus/pdfs/MarsMap.pdf

This expands my 'car free' while walking coverage greatly.

Al

Home 71 and Work 85.

Coffee Shops it lists are strange, Magna *** Latte never heard of it and I know my coffee shops here. Another coffee shop is All Texas Refrigeration; I think they wholesale margarita and ice cream machines? The Menil is listed as a library even though it's a private art collection. Clothing, Black Hawk Leather this is an S&M specialty store, they are really pushing it with classifying it as a clothing store.

Edit: Huh, it * out the name?

I was hoping it got more accurate but it seems worse. They list my house as a 37 however apparantly they got cross timbers drive in double oak mixed with cross timbers road in flower mound. 7 mile major artery squeezed into .5 miles of 2 lane road :eek:
So make sure you check it out in person or with google streetview at least before moving in ;)

Home 60; work 72, which is sort of silly, as where I live is much more walkable than where I work.

Big hole in the program is access to public transit -- how close you are to the stations and where you can go to from there.

I don't think any website can catch all the nuances. If you know your city, it's easy to locate the good areas for carfree. If you're moving someplace new, the website might help, but you might just have to walk and ride around for a while to find the really good spots.

95 for my apartment
82 for my girlfriend's apartment
26 for my parent's house
82 for my last apartment

Apartment: 3
Work: 26
House I am remodeling and hope to live in by Spring: 57

The number for where I work is a little deceptive. True, it is near a very wide variety of businesses, but walking much in that area would be a death wish. It's basically teetering on the edge of suburban hell, so I can ride to work and be fine, but if I went any further I'd likely be dead by now. But the side that's safer for riding and walking has almost no development at all, and the MUP basically spits me out 1/4 mile from work. So I have a 1/4 mile of frantically pedaling for my life, but before that it's nice and peaceful. What a ridiculous town I live in.

Geez, is mine the worst score not counting wahoonc's 'country home'? :o

Okay - don't be jealous anybody...

100 on all.

:o

The nearest library is "Ernst & Young". Some accounting firm. Why is that in the database as a library???

Probably because it has a library. My address counted the Federal Courthouse as a library because it has a law library.

Huh...it appears to be grossly inaccurate for me, giving a 3 out of 100. The local landmarks that I regularly walk to and are within 1/4 mile are all listed as being 2 miles away according to this website. I may be sort of in the sticks, but I have a grocery store, elementary + junior high, post office, a couple of bars, two liquor stores, and two restaurants all within a half-mile radius. And to echo what's been noted above, walkability and bikeability can be totally separate things. I have a MUP that serves as my private bike freeway to get into "town" (really the city next door to my little town), an easy ride of about 5 miles. The city of Fort Collins is pretty walkable on the north end of things, but everywhere is very bikeable.