Archive for April, 2009

Fun fact for Earth Day: according to the U.S. Census, 97 million Americans drive to work every day alone.  Only 6 million take public transit.  We’d like to introduce you to two people who are going to help us change that.

We’re thrilled to announce that Seleta Reynolds and Bronwen Thornton are joining the Walk Score Advisory Board.

Seleta is a consultant for Fehr & Peers, President of the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals, and serves on the Transportation Research Board Pedestrian Committee.

Seleta is an expert walkability practitioner and we’re excited to have her help as we work to make Walk Score more accurate.

Bronwen is Development Director for Walk21, the leading international conference on walkability. Bronwen has worked on transportation policy related to walking and biking in Britain, Australia, and Canada.

We’re excited about the international perspective Brownwen brings to Walk Score as we expand our coverage to more countries.

Welcome Seleta and Bronwen!

I’m reading the GOOD Magazine Transportation issue and there’s so much important stuff in it I just can’t tweet all of it.  This issue is a great primer in transportation innovation—go forth and read!

In no particular order…

Great Joseph Sussman Interview: He’s an MIT prof and advisor to DoT.  Love this quote, “Charge cars on a per mile basis, depending on what road you were traveling, at what time of day, in what kind of car.”  He also explains why we’re not investing enough in high-speed rail.

Zach Dundas pines after the coolest bike in the world:

Innovative Buses in Bogotá:

And of course the Walk Score article:

That’s right, you’ve probably never heard the words “fun” and “census data” in the same sentence before.  We’re starting to gear up for our next round of walkability rankings and wanted a quick way to compare the various city boundaries offered by the U.S. Census.

We asked our long-time collaborator Umbrella Consulting to put together this census boundary map so we could look at metropolitan statistical areas vs. urban places vs. incorporated places. Pretty cool to see all 20,000 U.S. cities visualized on the map!

The Walk Score API is churning away as you read this, calculating the Walk Scores of all the cities below…

I wish I could say that the Boston Globe interviewed me for this article and that I was SO on message that they covered all my talking points.   But I tend to ramble—so maybe this article is so good precisely because I wasn’t interviewed?

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2009/04/05/walk_this_way/

“Walkability has become a buzzword in real estate, as environmentalists and “green” planners advocate compact residential neighborhoods near businesses and public transportation. And some realtors say in this difficult market, houses with high walkability scores are easier to sell: Owners can save money by walking to mass transit, and by using less gas when running errands.”

Diverse Solutions is the first national IDX (real estate listing syndication) provider to add Walk Score to all their listings.

But they didn’t stop there—they also added a gorgeous search by Walk Score feature, the ability to sort results by Walk Score (powered by the Walk Score API), and a slick Walk Score Tile integration.

Sort by Walk Score and Walk Score Tile Integration

Diverse Solutions covers hundreds of MLS feeds with nearly 2.5 million active property listings.  They are also h4ck3rs (our ultimate programming compliment) of the first order: this is one of the nicest Walk Score integrations we’ve seen.  Super fast search,  great attention to detail, <gush>, <gush>.

Best of all, you can try it out right here.

Search by Walk Score, view Walk Score in property listings.

A picture is worth a thousand words:

Kudos to Trace Lofts for really getting the importance of walkability (vibrant culture, less global warming, better health, etc).