“Street Smart” Walk Score
We’re transparent about how Walk Score works and how it doesn’t work — and you’re vocal about the things you’d like to see us improve!
So we’re excited to share a sneak peek at the work we’re doing to address one of our top customer requests: using walking distances rather than crow-flies distances when calculating a Walk Score.
“Street Smart” Walk Score
Here’s an example of a house located across a freeway from a shopping mall. Walk Score currently gives this location a higher score than it deserves, because crow-flies distances assume you’ll walk across the freeway.
Walking across the freeway is dangerous.
The new “Street Smart” Walk Score uses walking routes and gives this location a lower score.
Walking routes to amenities.
Here’s another example from Baltimore where Walk Score currently assumes you will swim:
Is this water clean enough for swimming?
Here’s a more accurate picture of what you can walk to — but the score doesn’t change much:
No swimming necessary.
Pedestrian Friendliness
“Street Smart” Walk Score also incorporates a number of metrics that urban planners use to measure pedestrian friendliness:
- Intersection density measures how many intersections there are in a square mile— more is better.
- Another metric is something called link/node ratio. This measures how many roads go into each intersection (e.g. a 4-way intersection is more walkable than a 1-way cul-de-sac).
- Since shorter length blocks are more pedestrian friendly than long mega-blocks, block length as another proxy for pedestrian friendliness.
Here they are for my house in Seattle:
Pedestrian Friendliness Metrics
We’re currently working with Urban Design 4 Health and our advisory board on these refinements to the Walk Score algorithm. Stay tuned for more updates.
A big thanks to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for funding this work.
April 1st, 2011 at 4:22 pm
I live in a 2 sq mile city which should be eminently walkable and to an extent it is. Most of my daily living is done on foot. I suggest the emphasis on the label “Walkability” misses an important point with regard to people with disabilities. If I were blind or in a wheel chair I would have a very different score. We know what but as it isn’t a priority a lot is said but not much is done.
Walkability is but one important component of the social capital and “Quality Of Life” of a community.
May 23rd, 2011 at 10:55 pm
[...] neighborhoods’ walkability on a scale of 0 to 100, based on a complex, patent-pending, ever improving algorithm that awards points based on the distance from a given address to amenities in a variety [...]
November 11th, 2011 at 5:30 pm
[...] development, the site is now calculating (in beta) not just raw distance from conveniences, but “Street Smart” distances following actual walking routes. This is much more accurate in measuring convenience [...]
January 13th, 2012 at 9:34 pm
[...] than using “as-the-crow-flies” distances. The discrepancy has been one of the most suggested improvements and issues users find with the current service. The distance simplification currently used by the [...]
March 11th, 2012 at 3:09 am
[...] home) is to other places worth walking to. They're improving their algorithm, by making it "Street Smart," so that walking routes and scores are no longer defined by as-the-crow-flies proximity [...]