Neat toy

[jan_andrea]

This is cool.

You put in your streeet address and zip code, and it queries Google Maps to figure out how "walkable" your house and neighborhood are.

Our address right now gets a 78 out of 100, which is absolutely true -- I can walk to a lot of useful places easily, including the school, library, post office, and several cafes and whatnot.

My dad's house gets a 0 out of 100. No surprise there; it's at least 1.5 miles to *anywhere* and those places are meh. Mom's gets a 0/100, too; their nearest thing (the school) is listed as 1.64 miles, and most places are 4+ miles away.

Our old house in Racine got a 40/100. Interesting that our address now is so much more walkable!

What about where you live? If it's walkable, do you?

Comments

[brunahildm.livejournal.com]

I got a 17! Woo! It says "0 - 25 = Driving Only: Virtually no neighborhood destinations within walking range. You can walk from your house to your car!"

But that's not really true. I've walked to and from the garage when the car needed work, and I COULD walk to the grocery store, gas station, and library.

[ounceofreason.livejournal.com]

Yay, 72! Also, public transportation.

[tahoebean.livejournal.com]

Neat, we got a 63 and we walk a lot (grocery store, drug store, farmers market, etc...)

[tahoebean.livejournal.com]

Haha, our old house in Tahoe got a 71 - so untrue! They obviously don't account for things like... hills :) Also, they list 7-11 as a grocery store! HAHAHA

[jpallan.livejournal.com]

I live in Cambridgeport, four blocks up Magazine Street from Trader Joe's, four blocks on Putnam Avenue to Whole Paycheck, and eight blocks from the amenities of Central Square. Everything is walkable, and when not walkable, public transportable. It calculates walkability of 75%, with interesting gaps. We are a mile's walk from a theater — either the Brattle or the Harvard Square cinema. It also downgrades us for distance from banks, bookshops, apothecaries, hardware stores, cafés, locals, and the like ... that is, things that by nature aren't in a residential neighborhood.

I think that while it's a helpful metric, it's more helpful in places where there isn't any city planning. :P

[selaura.livejournal.com]

Mine gets 52/100. We don't walk a lot, though, Kansas heat in the summer and cold in the winter being what they are.

[sandramort.livejournal.com]

The house I'm in right now got 91 and the apartment I grew up in got 98!

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

45/100, but really, not that walkable. There are sidewalks along my street, but not really along the major roads--and minimal crosswalks, too. Our old apartment in Nebraska gets a 60/100, but we had a grocery store right across the street. Our goal is to eventually move someplace where we can walk places regularly again, but I'm not sure when that'll happen.

[allyphoe.livejournal.com]

0, which I could have guessed. Amusingly, they list the gas station (1.32 miles, closest anything around, and it's down a road with no lane markers, shoulder, or walkable grass that people normally drive 50mph down) as both a gas station and a restaurant.

My work got an 11, thanks to a former-gas-station-converted-to-steakhouse, and something that purports to be fitness-related that I suspect is a home-based MLM.

My off-campus apartment in college got an 83, and I walked everywhere. It probably wasn't *safe* to walk everywhere, but that bothered me less then than it would now.

[dnl2002.livejournal.com]

Big Fat Zero going on here. We live two miles away from any main area and the road that gets you there is a two lane highway with a 55 mph speed limit. I hate it so much. Guess that's what I get for using the internet to find a place to relocate to sight unseen.

Ten more months until the lease is up, and then it's back to civilization for me!

The street I grew up on only got a 68, but I see that there's quite a lot missing on the map. I really expected it to be in the 90's.

Thanks for sharing this!

[meadowrue.livejournal.com]

That is really cool. Our place scores 20 which doesn't surprise me at all, it's terrible for walkability. It's the main reason I want to move. I searched around some other areas in the city(Edmonton, AB) and couldn't find anything higher than 60. That's really terrible, I wonder if our long cold winters discourage planning a more walkable city. :/

[jenrose]

The new house gets a 51 and the old house gets a 77... however, that does not take into account the following:

The old house has no sidewalk to the main street that is close by, and one has to go quite a ways around to get to the "super close" shopping, etc.

The place we live now, you can get to the bus almost instantly, it is half a mile from my mother's house, and there is a cluster of stores/mall/etc. about half a mile away that means one can walk over, spend a LONG time over there without having to range very far, and then walk back.

Our old house, I was doing 3 tanks of gas (minivan) per month.

The new house, once we are settled, I may need one tank per month, maybe.

So my score for the walkability estimate? Meh.

[zauditu.livejournal.com]

I get 82/100...which actually seems a little low, but certainly respectable. Go dowtown living!

[featherbrain-tx.livejournal.com]

We got a zero too. Nearest place was something like 11 miles...? LOL, we are in the sticks on purpose tho... :)

Hey Jan, how did DH's trip to Texas go?

[oscarmama.livejournal.com]

34/100 -- but it assumed we could walk across the bridge, and we can't, unless we want to walk in the six inches between the white stripe and the guardrail on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and nowhere to jump but into the Monongahela.

Taking out the destinations it assumed were within walking range would lower that score considerably.

[justsurvive.livejournal.com]

i got 9 but i disagree. any of the good stuff is further away. ive lived it much more walkable places.
i dont walk as much as i should. too much pain, but at least that park is 2 blocks from me.

[bean77.livejournal.com]

We get a 20/100.

Boo.

Off topic here...do you have any connections to a place I could a child-sized dressform or mannequin cheap or FREE?

Thanks!