Walk Score could lead to better-planned transit networks

When Walk Score was introduced in 2007, it was a promising system with a major flaw: It measured distances as the crow flies rather than on a community’s network of streets and sidewalks.

But in recent months, the program’s Seattle-based developers, a company called Front Seat, has been introducing a more refined version — “Street Smart” Walk Score — that greatly improves the walkability ratings’ accuracy. This “beta” version does a better job of telling you whether a particular location is within comfortable walking distance of shops, services, and amenities — from grocery stores and restaurants to schools and parks.

You enter an address into the computerized Walk Score system, and up comes a rating, anywhere from zero to 100. Ninety to 100 is considered a “walkers’ paradise,” presumably indicating that you wouldn’t need to own a car if you lived there. Seventy to 89 is considered “very walkable,” indicating that residents probably don’t need a car. A score below 50 means the community is car-dependent.

The Street Smart version also incorporates metrics that urban planners use to measure pedestrian-friendliness:
• Intersection density — the number of intersections per square mile. (The more intersections, the better.)
• Link/node ratio — a measure of how many roads go into each intersection. (A four-way intersection is more walkable than a one-way cul-de-sac.)
• Block length. As Jane Jacobs explained 50 years ago in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, short blocks are more convenient for pedestrians.

Planners respond

With improvements such as these, Walk Score is becoming a tool that’s useful for urban planners. The City of Phoenix started employing Walk Score data this spring to upgrade the planning of the region’s Metro Light Rail system, says Curt Upon, light-rail planning coordinator for Phoenix’s Planning and Development Services Department.

From Front Seat, the department obtained a “shapefile” (a form of GIS data) containing Walk Score information, and collaborated with the company on how to use it. “It’s part of an initiative to update TOD [transit-oriented development] planning for the whole city,” Upton says. Phoenix can use the results to support decision-making on the level, priority, and type of resources to be invested in light-rail station areas.

Metro, with an initial segment of 20 miles, opened in December 2008 and has been attracting more than 40,000 riders a day — more than double what was projected, according to Upton. “There has been a fair amount of development activity around the light-rail system,” he says. But the system would undoubtedly draw additional riders, and generate more development, if the stations were embedded in convenient walking networks that offer amenities prized by the passengers.

“Walk Score data helps us understand which corridors and station locations perform best from a land use perspective — which is often a key missing input in transportation planning,” Upton says. Previously, the primary focus often was on “nodes” (stations) rather than on “place” considerations, Upton observes. Using the refined Walk Score system, planners should be able to make better recommendations.

When the findings become more detailed, planners could use them to do things such as breaking up long blocks and superblocks. Phoenix also expects to use Walk Score data to evaluate canal corridors. The region has 181 miles of canals — more than Amsterdam and Venice combined. With effective planning, there are hopes for generating “vital hubs of urban activity where canals meet major streets,” say the promoters of Canalscape, a project aimed at capitalizing on the waterways.

Phoenix is just one of the jurisdictions in which planning departments are using Walk Score. Harriet Tregoning, planning director for Washington, DC, says her department has found Walk Score to be an effective means for talking with residents about planning goals for neighborhoods and corridors. “

“It’s a pretty simple way to explain walkability,” Tregoning says. One of the goals of DC planners is “to create greater neighborhood convenience,” she says, and Walk Score helps identify what sorts of services and amenities can be reached on foot.

Future features

Although Front Seat is a for-profit company, the company has succeeded in getting foundation grants to improve Walk Score. The Rockefeller Foundation provided funds to produce Transit Score. The transit scoring system, introduced in August 2010, ranks how well-served a location is by bus and rail. It measures how far a person would need to walk to a transit stop and how frequently trains or buses arrive.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has supported the research on Street Smart’s pedestrian-friendliness metrics, says Matt Lerner, Front Seat’s chief technology officer. In a second stage of RWJF-supported work, Dr. Larry Frank, a health and walkability researcher at the University of British Columbia, will “help refine the algorithm” further, Lerner points out. One goal is to discover what sorts of amenities generate the most trips, and incorporate that information into the system.

Lerner observes that Walk Score is “almost a wiki system,” in that people volunteer to provide additional information and check others’ contributions. “We let you add things that are not on the map,” he says. If there are new stores, or if walking paths or trails have been overlooked, anyone can add them to the database.

Another step envisioned for Walk Score is pursuit of pedestrian safety issues, Lerner says. “We added ‘walksheds’ recently. We’re now looking at underlying road data — road width, number of lanes and speeds, block length, number of cul-de-sacs.” Conceivably, information on road width, number of lanes, and other elements “would tell us with a high degree of certainty it’s a dangerous place to walk,” he says. That could put pressure on transportation departments to alter lethal roadways.

In some parts of the country, there may be demand for adding other variables to the ratings. “Shade would be a good one, especially in Phoenix,” says Upton.

“We get a few requests for our data every single day, some from planners, some from academics, some from political organizers,” Lerner notes. Planning departments pay for the information. Large government entities can generate walkability assessments through their own GIS department, without going to Walk Score, but Walk Score is “way cheaper,” he asserts. “Medium- and small-size planning departments will never be able to do it on their own.”

Upton regards Walk Score as “a good complement to traditional field walkability audits.” In the past, he says, the city “might throw a team of interns into a station area and have them grade the streets.” Though that can produce insights, Walk Score “inserts a level of consistency and objectivity” into the process, he says.

Reaching homebuyers

In late July the company announced that more than 10,000 websites now feature Walk Score’s neighborhood data. “We have heard that many realtors are putting it on their own websites,” says Joe Molinaro, managing director for community affairs at the National Association of Realtors.

In the Denver area, Melissa Olson, senior manager for marketing and communications at Metrolist — a regional list of real estate for sale — says many brokers there are putting a widget on their websites, allowing people to submit an address and find its Walk Score. “The Walk Score site also gives you a commuter rating,” including the transit routes you might use, she adds.

The Denver region’s Multiple Listing Service includes a public website, REColorado.com, where anyone can search for properties that meet the criteria set by the searcher. “If you’re searching for an urban loft, you could say you’re looking only for those that have a Walk Score of 75 or higher,” Olson points out. Conversely, she says, sellers “can use the Walk Score rating to promote their property if they want.”

Molinaro thinks some people moving to a new region would be greatly interested in Walk Score ratings of properties they’re considering — especially if the prospective buyers already walk to amenities in their current neighborhood and want to be able to do the same in their future locale.

“With rising gas prices, Americans are looking for alternatives to long commutes and driving around town to complete their errands,” says Front Seat’s CEO, Josh Herst. “The latest real estate trends show that homes and apartments in walkable areas are in higher demand and are worth more than their less-walkable counterparts.”

In auto-dependent areas, the difference between a standard Walk Score rating and a Street Smart rating can be substantial. We entered Fleet Drive in Virginia Beach, Virginia, into the standard Walk Score system and out came a rating of 31. When we asked for Street Smart results, the rating plummeted to a pathetic 8. Walking routes on the map showed that we would have to walk considerable distances to find groceries (the closest source was 1.3 miles away), restaurants, bars, shopping, coffee (1.3 miles to Starbucks), and other amenities. The results also revealed the average block length (502 feet, considered “fair”) and the number of intersections per mile (76, considered “poor”).

Lerner says the company intends eventually to make Street Smart its standard Walk Score method, “but we don’t have a timeframe yet on doing that. We’re still collecting feedback on Street Smart” and also working with Frank and the company’s advisory board “on refining the methodology.” Anyone who wants to use Street Smart must choose that option on the Walk Score page.

See also the sidebar associated with this article, “New York beats San Francisco.”