In celebration of a Bike to Work Week and National Bike Month, we’ve updated our ranking of Most Bikeable Large U.S. Cities.

Portland narrowly edges out hilly San Francisco for the top spot, with Denver (home of the legendary B-cycle bike share) coming in a close third.

Top 10 Most Bikeable Large U.S. Cities

1. Portland (Bike Score: 70.3)

2. San Francisco (Bike Score: 70.0)

3. Denver (Bike Score: 69.5)

4. Philadelphia (Bike Score: 68.4)

5. Boston (Bike Score: 67.8)

6. Washington D.C. (Bike Score: 65.3)

7. Seattle (Bike Score: 64.1)

8. Tucson (Bike Score: 64.1)

9. New York (Bike Score: 62.3)

10. Chicago (Bike Score: 61.5)

Note: to keep our rankings apples-to-apples the list above only includes cities with 500,000 or more residents.

Smaller cities like Cambridge, MA crushed it with a Bike Score of 92 and Davis, Boulder, and Berkeley all scored in the high 80s.  Minneapolis also deserves an honorable mention with a Bike Score of 79.

Bike Score Now Available For 100+ Cities

Portland Bike Score Heatmap

Bike Score is now available for over 100 U.S. cities.

Type your address into the “Get a Walk Score” field at the top of this page to get your Bike Score.

Across the U.S. bicycle commuting grew 47% between 2000 and 2011. However, in cities that are making investments in bicycle infrastructure and education (which includes all of the Top 10 Bike Score cities listed above), bicycle commuting has grown 80% over the same period. This trend is leading a growing number of multi-family developers to build bike-friendly housing with secure storage spaces for bicycles and even putting repair shops in the buildings.

Search by Bike Time

Find a Bikeable Place to Live

With Walk Score’s unique apartment search by commute time you can find places to live within an easy bike commute to work.

If you’re still not biking, ask yourself if you’d like to be healthier, save money, and save the world.

More Details

• Bike Score is compiled from a data set that includes bike infrastructure, hilly terrain, number of bikers on streets and more.
• Want to add Bike Score to your site? Request a Bike Score API for your site.
• Contact us to learn how you can use Bike Score data in your research and analysis.

Bike Score: Built by bikers, for bikers!

Walk Score is growing! Earlier this year we launched our first ranking of Canadian cities and neighborhoods and just last week extended our international footprint to Australia.

We’ve also been busy adding to our suite of Walk Score Professional products and services including our Travel Time API and ChoiceMaps, a new way for real estate companies and cities to measure and analyze neighborhoods.

And today, we’re happy to share that Walk Score is now on more than 20,000 real estate sites and that we’re delivering over a quarter billion scores per month. Thank you!

Real-time map of addresses looked up on Walk Score:

Vote Walk Score for App of the Year

Vote for Walk Score

Finally, we’re honored to have been nominated for GeekWire’s App of the Year.

Please consider taking 30 seconds to vote for Walk Score.

Your vote helps us create a more walkable world!

With a Walk Score of 63, Sydney tops our first ranking of Most Walkable Australian Cities and Suburbs. To arrive at this ranking, we rated the walkablity of more than 100 Australian cities and 3,000 suburbs.  Read the official press release and our ranking methodology.

Australia’s 10 Most Walkable Large Cities

1. Sydney (Walk Score: 63)
2. Melbourne (Walk Score: 57)
3. Adelaide (Walk Score: 54)
4. Brisbane (Walk Score: 51)
5. Perth (Walk Score: 50)
6. Newcastle (Walk Score: 49)
7. Wollongong (Walk Score: 48)
8. Gold Coast (Walk Score: 48)
9. Central Coast (Walk Score: 41)
10. Canberra (Walk Score: 40)

Australians can also look up the Walk Score of their individual addresses and find Walk Score ratings on Harcourts.com.au, Homehound.com.au, realestateworld.com.au, WestRealEstate.com.au and other leading Australian real estate sites.

“Adding Walk Score to our real estate research products resulted in a significant uplift in our site usage,” said Tom White, CEO of PriceFinder.com.au. “The thirst for relevant and useful local information, from buyers, sellers and agents alike, cannot be overlooked and Walk Score provides this in spades. We especially appreciate the insights Walk Score brings to consumers looking to lower the cost of their transportation by selecting locations that suit their preferred transport options.”

Walkability Boosts Health and Real Estate Value

Walkable neighbourhoods offer a number of health and economic benefits. For example, a 10-year long study of Australians by the University of Melbourne found that walkable neighbourhoods with proximity to shops, parks and public transit improve people’s health and wellbeing. And, over the past decade, home values in Sydney’s walkable neighbourhoods have outperformed the rest of the city and can attract a 20% premium.

Apartment & Rental Search in Australia

Apartment Search by Commute Time in Sydney

Today, we’re also excited to launch our unique apartment and rental search for Australia. Search rental listings in major cities across the country by Walk Score and commute time and mode preference (foot, bike, transit, car) on the web and with our updated iPhone app.

Australian Real Estate Opportunity

Australian real estate professionals can now use Walk Score to their advantage. Showcase your properties and market yourself as a local expert. Boost your home listings with neighbourhood information including nearby amenities and commute times.

Learn more about Walk Score for real estate professionals.

It’s great to see more cities adopting plans with goals around access to neighborhood amenities.  For example, Washington DC’s new sustainability plan has a goal of having 75% of residents within a 5 minute walk of healthy food.  But access is only part of the story, depth of choice matters too.

In the travel industry, we’re seeing innovative companies like Airbnb providing more neighborhood information to help people decide where to stay.  For example, if you love eating, you might want to stay in a neighborhood with a lot of restaurant choices.

Real estate analysts want to track how places are changing over time.  For example, whether a neighborhood is economically vibrant (more businesses are opening) or whether a neighborhood is on the decline (more businesses closing).

We’re excited to announce ChoiceMaps^TM, a new way to measure access and choice in neighborhoods.

You can explore live ChoiceMaps for New York, Washington DC, Chicago, and Seattle.

Restaurant Choices in New York City

In New York, the average person can walk to 12 restaurants in 5 minutes (remember New York includes Staten Island).  To perform this analysis, we’re using our new Travel Time API to compute 32,000,000 walking times for 8.2 million people to over 21,000 restaurants.  And we’re doing this in real-time (try moving the time slider on one of the live maps).

Measuring Neighborhood Choice

Let’s look at depth of choice in Midtown Manhattan vs. my home town of Topeka, Kansas.  The average Midtown resident can walk to a staggering 1,251 restaurants in 20 minutes, but in Topeka you can only walk to an average of 7 restaurants in 20 minutes.  Midtown offers 179 times the number of choices!

In 20 minutes, you can walk to a staggering 1,251 restaurants in Midtown, Manhattan.

Tracking Neighborhoods Trends

Walk Score data subscribers now have access to historical and trend data for cities and neighborhoods.  Cities can use Walk Score to track the percentage of residents who can access various amenities — and how this changes over time.  Real estate analysts can track whether a neighborhood is becoming more or less walkable or how public transit service is increasing or decreasing.

For example, returning to DC’s sustainability plan, here’s a map of people who can walk to fresh food in 5 minutes.  Cities can use this type of historical and trend analysis to track their progress against their goals. Contact us to learn more about ChoiceMaps for your city.

Map of Food Access in Washington DC

And a hat tip to all of the planners attending the American Planning Association National Conference in Chicago who are hard at work to create more walkable cities.  Thank you!

Here are some visualizations we created with our recently launched Travel Time API.

Road Network Animation

Watch the network of roads in Seattle animate as we traverse the road network graph. View full screen animation. Try typing your own address into the “Where” field.

Commute Time Visualizations

This visualization shows public transit commutes from Amazon and Microsoft in Seattle. Each line represents one minute of travel time on public transit.  

Public transit commute times from Amazon and Microsoft at one minute intervals.

The visualization below shows bike commuting time from Google and Facebook in Silicon Valley, where each line represents one minute of biking time.

Bike commutes from Google and Facebook at one minute intervals.

The Walk Score Travel Time API makes it easy to create visualizations like these or add features like search by commute time to your website.  Contact us to learn more.  Thanks!

By popular demand, we’ve extended our unique commute time apartment search features to travel planning. Skip opening multiple browsers to research hotels in close proximity to business meetings or vacation attractions. With our new Hotel Search Demo you can now find hotels by travel times (by car, bus, bike or foot) to the people and places you’re visiting.

Location matters when deciding where to stay. Enter up to four places (e.g., business meetings, events, friends’ homes, attractions) and we’ll sort hotels by travel time. For each hotel you can also see nearby amenities (restaurants, coffee shops, etc.), public transit and car shares.

Example #1: Find hotels by travel times to/from the attractions you will be visiting. Here’s a sample hotel search by travel time to and from popular Manhattan art museums.

Walk Score demo: Hotel search by walking time to NYC museums.

Example #2: Find accommodations by proximity to meetings. For example, if you have business meetings in Seattle at Walk Score, Amazon, Starbucks and Zillow headquarters, you can find a hotel that minimizes commute time to each location.

Walk Score demo: Hotel search by drive time to meetings.

Example #3: If you’re planning an event or group trip and have side trips planned to Universal Studios, the zoo and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, for instance, find hotels near those key attractions.

Walk Score demo: Hotel search by transit travel time to LA attractions.

Example #4: Explore the amenities, transit stops and car shares nearby hotels you’re considering. Plan your ground transportation options, save money by eliminating the need for a rental car, and optimize your hotel stay based on nearby amenities.

Walk Score demo: Hotel search by nearby amenities, transit, car shares, more.

This hotel search demo is just a first step. We look forward to your feedback. And, if you’re interested in adding travel times to your website or mobile app, check out our new Travel Time API.

Today we’re excited to launch the new Travel Time API from Walk Score.  The Travel Time API allows you to rapidly calculate travel times to and from large numbers of places — and lets you visualize travel times on a map.

We’re also pleased to share that the number of scores delivered by our APIs has more than doubled over the past year to over 9 million per day. Thank you!

Hotel Finder API Demo

To demonstrate the power of the Travel Time API, we’ve created a prototype of a new way to find hotels.

Imagine you’re traveling to Seattle for a handful of business meetings.  Just type your meeting locations into our hotel finder, and we’ll show you hotels sorted by drive time, public transit time, walk time, or bike time.

Hotel Finder Demo powered by the Travel Time API.

Search by Commute Time

The Travel Time API can also be used to search for homes or apartments by commute time.  The Travel Time API exposes the same technology we use on Walk Score Apartment Search.

Powered by the Travel Time API.

Start Using the Travel Time API

The Travel Time API could, for example, also be used to:

• Sort local deals by drive, transit, walk, or bike times.
• Calculate employees’ commute time when looking at new offices.
• Visualize what’s within walking distance of a hotel or business.

Start by reading the documentation or contact us to get started with the Travel Time API.

Happy Coding!

A transportation shift is happening across America. Gas prices continue to rise. Car sales are down. Driver’s license ownership is declining. Car share use is up. And millennials, the largest demographic since baby boomers, are moving this trend forward across America.

Walk Score’s new car share infographic shows the top 10 car share cities with the most car share locations (pick-up and drop-off spots) and the top 3 neighborhoods in each city. Top 10 cities with hundreds of car share locations are:

1. New York City
2. San Francisco
3. Chicago
4. Portland
5. Washington, DC
6. Seattle
7. San Diego
8. Austin
9. Miami
10. Boston

Frequent car share user Suzzanne Lacey says, “I like that car shares allow me to have access to a car but not have to own one.” Lacey lives in a dense, but residential Seattle neighborhood and uses car shares about twice a month. “Parking is tough so along with city living and a lack of parking space, having a car just when I need one makes the most sense for my lifestyle.”

Search for Rentals by Car Share

Walk Score is the only place to search for apartments and rentals near car shares. Our “Gotta Have” apartment search allows you to filter your rental search by car shares (in addition to coffee shops and more).

More than 8,000 car share locations are listed on Walk Score, 7,500 of which are in 900 US cities. It’s easy and convenient for people to skip car ownership in favor of sharing, cutting costs, curbing their carbon footprint and living a more hassle free life. You can find car shares near your home, work or school on Walk Score’s site or iPhone app.

Notable Car Share Trends

Download Walk Score iPhone app.

Economic and cultural changes are driving the increase in car share use.

• Car shares save money: Average cost of owning a car is $9,859, while the average hourly cost of a car share is $9.64. If you drive less than 2.5 hours a day, a car share could save you money.
• According to the New York Times, “Last year, about 800,000 people belonged to car-sharing services in the United States, a 44 percent increase from 2011….”
• The millennial generation is ditching their cars in droves: “The share of new cars purchased by those aged 18-34 dropped 30% in the last five years, according to the car shopping web site Edmunds.com.” Source: CNN Money
• Driver’s license ownership down: “According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, just 28% of 16-year-olds and 45% of 17-year-olds had driver’s licences in 2010 (the most recent data available). In 1978, the corresponding figures were nearly half and more than two-thirds.” Source: The Globe and Mail
• Automakers are taking note: Ford Motor Company released a report on the rapidly rapidly changing auto trends. “Car-sharing services…, carpooling by Gen Yers, bike sharing and ‘multi-mix forms of mobility’ are all explored as signs of how consumers are changing their car habits,” writes Adweek.
• Americans drive fewer miles: Is the recession causing a temporary blip in car ownership and miles driven? Trends show the shift is more permanent. “…the move away from cars is bigger than the U.S. (and bigger than the recession).” Source: The Atlantic. A DC Streets Blog analysis reports, “Since 2005, Americans have been driving fewer miles each year. While the shift predated the onset of the Great Recession, the question of whether the decline in driving marked a sea change in the way we get around or simply reflected a drop in economic activity has been a matter of considerable debate.”
• Gas prices keep rising: It’s no surprise to anyone who fuels up. Aside from disposable income being less than any time in decades, gas prices keep rising, making car ownership costs also rise.
• Car shares offer self-service convenience: Car shares can be rented by the hour 24/7 vs. traditional rental car companies which often require a 1-day minimum rental. You can take public transit to work, then use a car share for a 1-way trip home to grocery shop. Car share locations are all over cities and residential neighborhoods vs. a centrally located rental car office, making car sharing part of every life vs. only on vacation.

Car Share Infographic Footnotes

• $9,859 yearly car ownership data is from AAA.
• Hourly costs is based on car share data from Getaround.
• Top model data is based on peer-to-peer car shares only (Getaround and RelayRides).
• Ranking is based on most car share locations per city/neighborhood.
• Car share providers on Walk Score infographic: City CarShare, Enterprise CarShare, Getaround, Hertz On Demand, I-GO, RelayRides, WeCar, Zipcar, car2go
• See more car sharing trends.

Vancouver, with a Walk Score of 78, topped Canada’s most walkable cities in our first ranking of Most Walkable Canadian Cities and Neighbourhoods. We rated the walkability of more than 300 Canadian cities and 1,200 neighbourhoods. (This means Vancouver is the Pacific Northwest’s most walkable large city, outranking our own Seattle by four points). Apartment search and Transit Score are also now available in most major Canadian cities. Read the official press release.

Canada’s Top 10 Most Walkable Large Cities

1. Vancouver (Walk Score = 78)
2. Toronto (Walk Score = 71)
3. Montreal (Walk Score = 70)
4. Mississauga (Walk Score = 59)
5. Ottawa (Walk Score = 54)
6. Winnipeg (Walk Score = 53)
7. Edmonton (Walk Score = 51)
8. Hamilton (Walk Score = 51)
9. Brampton (Walk Score = 48)
10. Calgary (Walk Score = 48)

You can now also find Walk Score ratings on Realtor.ca, RoyalLePage.ca, Centris.ca and other leading Canadian real estate sites.

“Buyers are factoring in what’s nearby in their search for properties,” said Marc Lafrance, The Canadian Real Estate Association’s director of product management. “Adding Walk Score to Realtor.ca provides home buyers with valuable insight into the location of a property and has been well received by our users. Walk Score’s new Canadian city and neighbourhood rankings are a great new resource for people deciding where to live.”

Walkable neighbourhoods offer numerous benefits:

• A recent Toronto Public Health study found overwhelming consumer preference for walkable neighbourhoods with a range of shops and services within walking distance, a short commute to work or school, and easy access to public transit.  The study further found that people living in walkable neighbourhoods have lower body weights and that walkable neighbourhoods contribute to better air quality and traffic reduction.
• People who live in walkable areas are 2.4 times more likely to get the required daily amount of physical activity (Healthy Weights for Healthy Kids: Report of the Standing Committee on Health, 39th Parliament, 1st session, Government of Canada).
• One point of Walk Score adds up to US$3,000 to home values according to independent research conducted by CEOs for Cities.

While the official ranking covers Canadian’s ten largest cities, here are a couple of Canadian notables:

• Of the 1,200 we scored, 30 neighbourhoods are “Walker’s Paradises” with a Walk Score of 90 or higher.
• Toronto has more “Walker’s Paradise” neighbourhoods (17) than Vancouver (3).
• Victoria, highly walkable with a Walk Score of 78, is too small (population under 100,000) to make the ranking, but otherwise would have rivaled Vancouver. And Westmount, a small city on the Island of Montreal (with a population of approximately 20,000) takes home the top Walk Score with a 79.

Canadian Real Estate Opportunity

Canadian real estate agents can now use Walk Score to their advantage. Showcase properties and market yourself as a local expert. Boost your home listings with neighborhood information including nearby amenities, transit access and commute times. All things buyers want. Stimulate new business opportunities by marketing neighborhood value and amenities to buyers. Learn more about Walk Score for real estate professionals.

Toronto apartment search by walking commute

Apartment Search in Canada

We also launched apartment search via the web and our iPhone app in Canada today. Search rental listings in major cities across the country by Walk Score, commute time and mode preference (foot, bike, transit, car), and proximity to public transportation. Search for apartments and rentals now.

Local Insight

Two native Canadian coders who work at Walk Score helped calculate their homeland’s ranking.

Kenshi Kawaguchi, one of our score-maestro engineers from Calgary talks about his home town, “Calgary isn’t really that walkable. In fact, they made a mockumentary about suburban sprawl in Calgary. There are some walkable neighbourhoods, like Kensington, and I think there is definitely a shift towards walkability with some recent neighbourhood redevelopments and a more socially conscious mayor.” Video: New development in Calgary’s East Village neighbourhood.

Walk Score computer systems analyst Tony Targonski, from Toronto, has another angle on Canada’s 2^nd most walkable city. “Toronto’s outer edges have much to gain from improving walkability. Growing up in a 47 (Walk Score) house felt very restrained and I found myself naturally gravitating towards areas that have scores in the 90s. The moment one gets close to a subway station, establishments in every category suddenly become accessible. It’s very liberating.”