Originally Posted by
CrankyOne
The problem with walkscore is that it's distance based. There have been a number or articles about how it rates a 1/4 mile walk along a 55 mph 4-lane road with no sidewalk to a place with 1 greasy spoon and a 7-eleven better than a 1/3 mile walk along a 30 mph residential street with a sidewalk to a place with 4 nice cafe's, a grocery, and other things.
Great idea, useless execution.
I'm sure it's far from perfect but I doubt it's consistently that bad. FWIW the 3 scores I got pretty accurately reflected the realities of places I have lived.
Edit: Turns out that walkscore improved their algorithms starting last year so that it's not longer just distance based. They called it the "
Street Smart Walk Score Algorithm"