Walkability? We're #10! We're #10!

[dbigtex56]

According to a recent Forbes magazine article, the Montrose is among America's most walkable neighborhoods(#10).

I'll take that as a compliment, although its veracity is questionable; I see fewer pedestrians in Montrose now than I did 25 years ago.

[MidtownCoog]

According to a recent Forbes magazine article, the Montrose is among America's most walkable neighborhoods(#10).

I'll take that as a compliment, although its veracity is questionable; I see fewer pedestrians in Montrose now than I did 25 years ago.

But there were a lot more muggings 25 years ago, too.

[citizen4rmptown]

well they cant say the WHOLE of houston isnt walkable,now can they?

[dbigtex56]

But there were a lot more muggings 25 years ago, too.

Were there?

Seriously, it's difficult to quantify crime. You may be right, because there were a lot more gay-basher types in the streets back then. However, we now have a drug subculture which has made up the difference.

It's a different class of muggers and victims.

[samiamj]

http://walkscore.com/

I typed in my address and I got a score of 49 (not walkable). I live in Shady Acres. I am surprised because we have 2 grocery stores and many restaurants but they are a mile away.

What is Walk Score? We help people find houses and apartments in walkable neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Living in a walkable neighborhood is good for the environment and good for your health.

The score is based on the following matrix between 0 and 100. Here are the site's general guidelines:

* 90 - 100 = Walkers' Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.

* 70 - 90 = Very Walkable: It's possible to get by without owning a car.

* 50 - 70 = Some Walkable Locations: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car.

* 25 - 50 = Not Walkable: Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving or public transportation is a must.

* 0 - 25 = Driving Only: Virtually no neighborhood destinations within walking range. You can walk from your house to your car!

Walk Score uses a patent-pending system to calculate the walkability of an address based on:

* The distance to walkable locations near an address.

* Calculating a score for each of these locations.

* Combining these scores into one easy to read Walk Score.

Your Walk Score may change as our data sources are updated or as we improve our algorithm.

[HtownWxBoy]

http://walkscore.com/

I typed in my address and I got a score of 49 (not walkable).

What is Walk Score? We help people find houses and apartments in walkable neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Living in a walkable neighborhood is good for the environment and good for your health.

The score is based on the following matrix between 0 and 100. Here are the site's general guidelines:

* 90 - 100 = Walkers' Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.

* 70 - 90 = Very Walkable: It's possible to get by without owning a car.

* 50 - 70 = Some Walkable Locations: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car.

* 25 - 50 = Not Walkable: Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving or public transportation is a must.

* 0 - 25 = Driving Only: Virtually no neighborhood destinations within walking range. You can walk from your house to your car!

Walk Score uses a patent-pending system to calculate the walkability of an address based on:

* The distance to walkable locations near an address.

* Calculating a score for each of these locations.

* Combining these scores into one easy to read Walk Score.

Your Walk Score may change as our data sources are updated or as we improve our algorithm.

Scored a 72 for my place in the Heights. :-)

[august948]

http://walkscore.com/

I typed in my address and I got a score of 49 (not walkable).

What is Walk Score? We help people find houses and apartments in walkable neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Living in a walkable neighborhood is good for the environment and good for your health.

The score is based on the following matrix between 0 and 100. Here are the site's general guidelines:

* 90 - 100 = Walkers' Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.

* 70 - 90 = Very Walkable: It's possible to get by without owning a car.

* 50 - 70 = Some Walkable Locations: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car.

* 25 - 50 = Not Walkable: Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving or public transportation is a must.

* 0 - 25 = Driving Only: Virtually no neighborhood destinations within walking range. You can walk from your house to your car!

Walk Score uses a patent-pending system to calculate the walkability of an address based on:

* The distance to walkable locations near an address.

* Calculating a score for each of these locations.

* Combining these scores into one easy to read Walk Score.

Your Walk Score may change as our data sources are updated or as we improve our algorithm.

I got a 46 for my location in west Houston near Dairy Ashford and Westheimer. Their database is way out of date...showing a couple of grocery stores that have been closed for several years and missing several coffee shops that are much closer than the one they listed as closest. I know it's more suburban where i'm at than in Montrose, but come on! I put a rack on my mountain bike and have been going to the grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, bookstores, etc. Not that hard to do...pretty much everything is within a 30 min or less bike ride and a lot is within a 10-15 min bike ride. The closer stuff is within a 30 min walk or less. That all seems reasonable to me, especially since it is not that much different time-wise from taking a car (vs using the bike, anyway), having to drive through traffic, find a parking spot, etc. for the short haul-trips. Plus we have metro on Westheimer, Dairy Ashford and Richmond. Seems like I would be in the 50-70 range instead of the driving only range. Maybe the Walk Score parameters are set up assuming people don't want to walk or bike more than 5 or 10 mins.

[desirous]

well they cant say the WHOLE of houston isnt walkable,now can they?

Oh, it's only a matter of willpower. I can say Houston is bikeable -- eminently so, given I biked from downtown to Alief and back last week without dying.

[capnmcbarnacle]

Oh, it's only a matter of willpower. I can say Houston is bikeable -- eminently so, given I biked from downtown to Alief and back last week without dying.

91 Suckers!!! But I still drive 2 blocks to the store.

Montrose is a gem. There are a ton of places in Houston that would surprise people. I recently told someone in Austin that I'm never in my car more than 15 minutes and they refused to believe me. Houston reminds me of LA in that it is a fine line between having a short drive or being in your car half the day. Not a lot of middle ground.

[sarahiki]

http://walkscore.com/

I typed in my address and I got a score of 49 (not walkable).

What is Walk Score? We help people find houses and apartments in walkable neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Living in a walkable neighborhood is good for the environment and good for your health.

that's a pretty cool site. It determined that my 3rd Ward neighborhood is very walkable. Certainly is, based on the numbers of people walking around (in the middle of the road, always) at all hours of day and night. I have to question the reliability of the scoring, though. It scored my neighborhood high because there's a "grocery store" a tenth of a mile away. Except that it's actually a horrid little convenience store that sells nothing but beer, soda and chips. And it smells bad. And it's scary. It was open during Rita, however, and I *walked* right on over to buy beer. While the rest of Houston was sitting in their car in traffic on a freeway. But that's off topic.

[OkieEric]

91 Suckers!!! But I still drive 2 blocks to the store.

Montrose is a gem. There are a ton of places in Houston that would surprise people. I recently told someone in Austin that I'm never in my car more than 15 minutes and they refused to believe me. Houston reminds me of LA in that it is a fine line between having a short drive or being in your car half the day. Not a lot of middle ground.

I got a 91 in Montrose as well...from previous posts, I think we must live pretty close to one another. I'm also never in my car more than 15 minutes, though quick access to 59 definitely helps with that

[RedScare]

well they cant say the WHOLE of houston isnt walkable,now can they?

Conversely, they cannot say that the WHOLE city of New York, Boston, Chicago or Seattle IS walkable, either. Because each of these cities is several hundred square miles in size, it is impossible to walk further than one's own neighborhood without benefit of a bicycle or mass transit. For that very reason, I find this website, while helpful, to be unduly restrictive. If it were to rate a neighborhood on "carlessness", it would be a much more realistic and useable site.

Two things I noted to make my point.

1) None of the criteria for walkability include office buildings or work, other than retail jobs at the locations that make a neighborhood "walkable".

2) As if to acknowledge the shortcomings of the site, on the right hand column is a box urging site visitors to contact Congress to improve walking, biking and mass transit in the 2009 Transportation bill.

It might be more than the site designer can handle, but it seems to me that a REAL walkable neighborhood would include, at least as a secondary benefit, locations that can be accessed by bike or transit in, say, 15 minutes or less. If I can walk, bike or ride a bus to everything I need in under 15 minutes, and additionally, mass transit is nearby that will get me to work, I do not need a car. THAT is as good a neighborhood as I reasonably need, and it does not require taking a bulldozer to entire cities to make them look like Manhattan.

Coincidentally, I live in one now (with the exception of that new job I took a few months back )

[KatieDidIt]

I got a 46 for my location in west Houston near Dairy Ashford and Westheimer. Their database is way out of date...showing a couple of grocery stores that have been closed for several years and missing several coffee shops that are much closer than the one they listed as closest. I know it's more suburban where i'm at than in Montrose, but come on! I put a rack on my mountain bike and have been going to the grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, bookstores, etc. Not that hard to do...pretty much everything is within a 30 min or less bike ride and a lot is within a 10-15 min bike ride. The closer stuff is within a 30 min walk or less. That all seems reasonable to me, especially since it is not that much different time-wise from taking a car (vs using the bike, anyway), having to drive through traffic, find a parking spot, etc. for the short haul-trips. Plus we have metro on Westheimer, Dairy Ashford and Richmond. Seems like I would be in the 50-70 range instead of the driving only range. Maybe the Walk Score parameters are set up assuming people don't want to walk or bike more than 5 or 10 mins.

Kirkwood and Memorial here and got a 37. I agree it's out of date. Within .33 miles there are a few nail salons, dry cleaners,MAC for Women, Ups store, paint store,5 eateries,a couple clothing boutiques, shoe cobbler,gifts shops, jewelry shops,day spa, Some sort of brake and battery place, cooking schools,flower shop and a whole ton of other things I've never bothered to go in.

At .84 miles there is a Krogers, a Public library, and another slew of shops.

7 Starbucks within 1.5 miles. . I never knew that. None of which are slated to close.

I guess by American standards that's "car dependant." But then we are a nation of lard-asses, so there you go..

[wernicke]

Got a 78 for my place in Midtown...

Seems like they would need to include environmental factors too... like 95 degree heat + 90 percent humidity.

[RedScare]

Got a 78 for my place in Midtown...

Seems like they would need to include environmental factors too... like 95 degree heat + 90 percent humidity.

I would agree that a locale with that kind of weather might be unwalkable. Do you know of a place where that happens?

[Subdude]

Something to bear in mind is that "walkability" isn't just a function of distance. A big issue is how much you have to carry on different trips. Not having a car means frequent trips to the grocery store and you have to lug the groceries home so you want that relatively close, ideally within a 15 minute walk. For other purposes, such as commuting to work, a longer walk than that oughtn't be an problem. A 30-40 minute walk to work might not be unreasonable. Anything longer than that pretty much has to be by bicycle or bus however.

Note that all of this assumes cooperative weather.

[sabasushi]

Got a 78 for my place in Midtown...

Seems like they would need to include environmental factors too... like 95 degree heat + 90 percent humidity.

Yeah, but it's not exactly 95 degrees all year long...only in mid-to-late summer. :-)

And don't forget that some of the cities with high walkable scores like New York City have REAL winters, the kind that runs *months* (not just January like here in Texas) and frequently FREEZING.

One thing the Walk Score site doesn't take into factor is the affordity -- if they did, cities like NYC and San Francisco will really plummet down the list faster than a piano falling out of a 20th floor window. :-)

On an aside: people here mentioned the outdated directiory information like stores now closed. It looks like Walk Score uses Google Maps for their application, and probably uses the same business directory that Google Maps use. If you've ever searched Google Maps for businesses, you almost always have to call these businesses to see if they're still in business. I guess Google Maps uses old data (as opposed to real-time data) to save money.

[RocketSci]

Yeah, but it's not exactly 95 degrees all year long...only in mid-to-late summer. :-)

And don't forget that some of the cities with high walkable scores like New York City have REAL winters, the kind that runs *months* (not just January like here in Texas) and frequently FREEZING.

One thing the Walk Score site doesn't take into factor is the affordity -- if they did, cities like NYC and San Francisco will really plummet down the list faster than a piano falling out of a 20th floor window. :-)

I think that more valid measures of walkability should be: (1) the number of people actually walking, and (2) how many people are walking to a destination, as opposed to recreational walking (in other words, don't count Rice walking trail).

I would love to see a survey of pedestrian density per block. In Houston, areas such as the Bissonette/Hillcroft, Bellaire/Hillcroft, or Harrisburg would likely show a much higher pedestrian density than Westheimer or Montrose during the day.

[sevfiv]

Google maps has added walking directions (beta):

http://www.hothardware.com/News/Google_Map...e_Healthy_Side/

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/07/g...directions.html

[Pumapayam]

Scored a 72 for my place in the Heights. :-)

My psuedo outside the uptown area house got a freaking 83! I knew it would be high, yay for grided neighborhoods!

[20thStDad]

My psuedo outside the uptown area house got a freaking 83! I knew it would be high, yay for grided neighborhoods!

Does the Galleria fit into your "walkable" range? If so I imagine the score would be crazy high like that.

[Pumapayam]

Does the Galleria fit into your "walkable" range? If so I imagine the score would be crazy high like that.

Less than 2 miles from my house, Google says about 5 minute drive, 35 minute walk. I don't think the Galleria mall helps.

All the locations selected near my home were non-Galleria mall locations.

But it is flawed. It picked a home theatre store as a real movie theatre.

[20thStDad]

Less than 2 miles from my house, Google says about 5 minute drive, 35 minute walk. I don't think the Galleria mall helps.

All the locations selected near my home were non-Galleria mall locations.

But it is flawed. It picked a home theatre store as a real movie theatre.

I put in addresses for 2 different apartment complexes less than a half mile from the Galleria and they only got 72. I guess movie theater and park brought it down? But to me if you can walk to the Galleria, you can walk to whatever you need. Flawed indeed, but still an interesting tool.

[OkieEric]

I put in addresses for 2 different apartment complexes less than a half mile from the Galleria and they only got 72. I guess movie theater and park brought it down? But to me if you can walk to the Galleria, you can walk to whatever you need. Flawed indeed, but still an interesting tool.

I just put in 5000 Westheimer and got in the low 70's, then 6000 Westheimer and got a 94?! I really wouldn't consider that area very pedestrian friendly, though I guess there are a lot businesses fairly close together. With all of the misclassifications, it seems it's more of a measure of how many businesses are located within a certain distance - that's part of "walkability", sure, but as others have pointed out there are many other factors that can't be automatically estimated.

The results on mine were pretty accurate...well, except that it counted the Alabama Theatre as an actual movie theatre. Maybe someday...

[KinkaidAlum]

My street address in Boston scored a 95. However, this thing is a joke.

It called the Aguadilla Market a "gorcery store." I guess if you eat lotto tickets it might be?

It also said there was a movie theater at 44 Rutland Square. That's someone's house. Maybe they have a media room!

Here's all I need to know;

It takes me 5 minutes to walk to work

It takes me 3 minutes to walk to the gym

It takes me 1 minute to get to the nearest restaurant

It takes me 15 minutes to walk to the Loews Cinema on the Boston Common

It takes me 5 minutes to walk to either the Pru Mall or the Copley Plaza Mall

It takes me 5 minutes to walk to the nearest T stop and Amtrack station

It takes me 10 minutes to walk to the Charles River Esplanade

It takes me 10 minutes to walk to the Public Garden

It takes me 20 minutes to walk to the heart of downtown

AND, when I do walk, I have wide sidewalks, protected pedestrian crossings, and plenty of other walkers around to make things enjoyable.

[Texas Wahoo]

My new address in Arlington, VA gets a 97 - so I guess I'll be walking a lot.

My old address in Houston gets a 54, even though no one walks very far out of the neighborhood.

[dbigtex56]

Does the Galleria fit into your "walkable" range? If so I imagine the score would be crazy high like that.

Despite its density, The Galleria area isn't exactly a pedestrian's paradise.

Narrow, unshaded sidewalks, acres of surface parking, extremely wide streets and heavy vehicular traffic are among the conditions one has to tolerate. How can any "walkabity score" be calculated without weighing all factors?

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a walkability score of D+.

[OkieEric]

Just checked walkscore.com again for the heck of it, and noticed that they have kind of a "heat map" of walkability and neighborhood ranking now. Hadn't noticed this before:

Houston's Most Walkable Neighborhoods

[TJones]

WOW! I got a 66 out of 100 rating fro my location here in Austin, I really thought it would be better than that. I feel like I have literally EVERYTHING within less than a mile.

[kylejack]

According to a recent Forbes magazine article, the Montrose is among America's most walkable neighborhoods(#10).

I'll take that as a compliment, although its veracity is questionable; I see fewer pedestrians in Montrose now than I did 25 years ago.

Midtown has waaay more pedestrians now than Montrose.