Transportation, Revisited
The latest installment in my round-up of city/country pros and cons
I was reading this blog today and ran across a cool program that rates the "walkability" of any location on a score of zero to 100: Walk Score. I immediately tried it out for every place I've ever lived. The house I grew up in (near, but definitely not in walking distance of, a small town) got a score of zero. No surprise there. I tried walking into town once or twice on a lark when I was in high school, and always had to call someone to come pick me up and drive me home afterward. You might be able to manage it on a bike (my little brother certainly tried before he got his license), but even then it would take a lot of patience and bugspray (the bike trail is pretty overgrown), and it would only work about 8 months out of the year.
The apartment I lived in last year, when I was working at my alma mater in an even smaller town, got a 62. It was a great apartment over a flower shop in an old Italianate, practically in the center of town. I could walk out my front door in the late spring and bump right into the farmer's market. The coffee shop, pizza place, yoga studio, health food store, movie theater and ice cream parlor were all within a block or two. (Basically, the whole town was within in a block or two.) The grocery store was a little farther away, but you could walk there on nicer days if you really wanted to. The downside to all of this is that there just wasn't a whole lot in town. If you wanted, say, art supplies (which, as an art major, I often did) you had to drive 45 minutes or more to the closest city. So I guess that's why it only scored a 62. I really felt a little trapped there when I didn't have access to a car.
My current apartment scored a 92. It's true; this place is really walkable. We rarely have use for a car, and even those places we drive to are usually accessible by public transport, if you're willing to work on the city's schedule (which I usually am). It's cool. But there are a couple of things that I don't think the Walk Score takes into account, such as the local climate or (as the blog I linked to pointed out) crime rate. The latter isn't a problem here, but the former can definitely put a damper on walkability in the long winter months. Still, I guess I'd rather be walking or taking the bus than trying to navigate city roads and crazy commuter traffic in the middle of a January blizzard.
Try it out; it's fun to see what the program comes up with! I discovered a tea store just a few blocks away. I hope it exists in real life.
