Search by Multiple Commute Times

Just six weeks ago we launched apartment search by commute time. Now we’ve added the ability to search by multiple commutes.

Let’s say you bike to work downtown and your spouse or roommate takes the bus to school.  Walk Score finds apartments that optimize the commute of everyone in your home.  See an example commute search.

Find Apartments Near Transit

Want to find an apartment within walking distance of the subway or the express bus that goes to your office?

No problem, with our new “Near Transit” search option you can select the transit route that you’d like to live near and how far you’re willing to walk to the stop. See transit search in action.

Search by Walk Score

Whether you want to be in the heart of it all, or just don’t want to have to drive to get a cup of coffee, Apartment Search now includes the ability to search by Walk Score.

Select the Walk Score search filter and click Walker’s Paradise to find only Walk Score 90+ apartments. See Walker’s Paradise apartments in Seattle.

Did you know:

• The longer your commute, the more likely you are to be overweight, have high cholesterol and suffer from neck/back pain (Source: Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index)
• Car ownership costs are the second largest household expense in the U.S. The average household spends more on their cars than they do on food and health care. (Source: Dept. of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• People who live in walkable neighborhoods are happier, healthier and more likely to volunteer and entertain friends at home (Source: University of New Hampshire)

Whether you prefer driving, public transit, walking, or biking, Walk Score can help you find a commute that fits your lifestyle.

Commuting is expensive and time spent sitting in traffic is lost forever. Here are our favorite commuting stats:

• Over three quarters of home shoppers rate being within a 30 minute commute to work as important. (Source: National Association of Realtors)
• Commuters waste 4.2 billion hours and 2.8 billion gallons of gas in traffic per year. (Source: Texas Transportation Institute)
• The average American spends over $9,000 per year on their car. This is the equivalent of a $135,000 mortgage and the second largest expense for most households, costing more than food, clothing and health care. (Source: AAA)

To get started, visit walkscore.com/apartments and enter your work (or school) address, select your preferred mode of transportation, and tell us how long you’re willing to commute.

Apartment listings from craigslist are automatically sorted by estimated commute time and can be further filtered by Walk Score, price and size.

And if you don’t find what you’re looking for, we’ve integrated links to MyNewPlace and ForRent.com to search their national databases for nearby rental listings.

“Access to public transit and minimizing commute times are high-priority, quality of life issues for many renters. We’re very pleased to offer Walk Score users access to MyNewPlace’s extensive inventory of apartments and rental homes in virtually every neighborhood throughout the U.S.,” said Mark Moran, MyNewPlace SVP of Marketing.

Here’s a demo:

Find a better commute today!

With the Public Transit API, real estate and other website owners can show nearby public transit stops on a map, show a text description of nearby transit stops and routes, and show the Transit Score of a specific location.

And we’re excited that ZipRealty is the first brokerage firm to integrate Transit Score into their website.

“A growing number of home shoppers are seeking out homes that offer strong public transit options, high walkabilty scores and green features,” said ZipRealty’s Chief Home Hunter Leslie Tyler. “Showing Transit Score ratings for all home listings on our website gives our clients additional information about alternative transportation that they need before making an offer on a home.”

Read ZipRealty’s press release.

Almost a year ago we asked Is ZipRealty the Greenest Real Estate Site? What do you think?

Last year, with the support of The Rockefeller Foundation, we set out to address these questions. And building on the initial integration of public transit information into Walk Score and the launch of City-Go-Round, today we are pleased to take another step forward in promoting transparency around transportation choices.

Our new Transit Score and custom Commute Reports empower anyone to quickly understand the proximity of public transportation and their commuting options.

Read the official press release.

What’s your Transit Score?

Transit Score of Boston

Similar to Walk Score, Transit Score provides a 0-100 rating indicating how well an address is served by public transportation. Ratings range from “Rider’s Paradises” that have world-class bus and rail service to areas with limited or no nearby public transportation. Transit Score is currently available in over 40 cities where public transit information is available. These cities include Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C.

What will your commute be like?

Commute Report in Seattle

After you’ve looked up an address on Walk Score, you can now get a summary of commuting options, including the time it would take to get to your work, school or other location by car, bike and foot and to see nearby public transit stops and routes. The customized commute report also includes a visual representation of the hills between your home and work to better understand how bikable or walkable the route may be.

Can you really afford this home?

Housing and Transportation Costs

For most families, transportation is the second largest household expense. Walk Score’s new home and transportation costs calculator makes it easier for people to understand the true costs of owning or renting in a particular location. Based on a few simple pieces of information, the calculator generates an estimated monthly amount that includes housing and transportation costs.

In particular, we’d like to thank Benjamin de la Pena, Associate Director at The Rockefeller Foundation, and the team at the Center for Neighborhood Technology who have been great partners on this initiative.

Below is a screenshot from the front page of Yahoo! Real Estate in Japan.  See the big picture of a train?

Picking the subway line or subway station near where you’d like to live is the primary way to search for a home or apartment on many Japanese real estate websites.  Picking the subway line comes before picking your price range, before picking the number of bedrooms, before picking a neighborhood, etc.  Exotic, isn’t it?!

Search by Subway Line - Front Page of Yahoo! Real Estate Japan

Here I’ve selected the Yamanote line to search for properties.  Real estate near the Yamanote line is desirable and expensive (more on why below).

Now I can select the subway stations on the Yamanote line where I’d like to search for real estate.

Search for Properties by Subway Station

Now I see the list of properties near the subway stations I’ve selected.

And drum roll please…  each property shows the walking distance to the nearest subway station!

In fact, my Japanese sources (pictured at the bottom of this post) tell me that the walking distance to the nearest subway station is the thing they look at first on a real estate listing.

Property Listings Show Walking Distance to Subway Stations

What is Transit-Oriented Development?

Transit-oriented development (TOD) is mixed-use residential and commercial development designed to maximize access to public transit.  TOD is a hot topic among urban planners right now—but Japan has been doing it for decades!

Why did Japanese real estate evolve this way? It turns out that Japanese rail companies built their subway lines on land they already owned—and these same companies developed the real estate around the subway lines. This ensured that there were enough people within walking distance of the subway.  In other words, the subway lines and real estate were developed together… which is exactly transit-oriented development!

An interesting side effect of this process is that the companies who built the subway lines tended to develop similar real estate along the entire line.  For example, a luxury company would develop high-end real estate along their subway line.  This is why real estate on the Yamanote line is considered desirable and is expensive—it was developed to be luxurious!  Imagine if people in the Bay Area said, “I’ve always wanted to live on the Pittsburgh / Bay Point line.  The real estate along that line is really choice.”

Public Transit on U.S. Real Estate Listings

As more cities in the U.S. benefit from transit-oriented development (like the Seattle light rail that is being extended as I type this) we expect to see more real estate listings showing nearby transit.

Walk Score has already helped hundreds of real estate sites show nearby public transit on their listings and we’re considering making our public transit data available via an API.  Contact us if you’re interested in showing public transit on your site.

Thanks to Takeshi and Yasuo from NHK TV in Japan who came to our offices to interview us about Walk Score—little did they know I was going to interview them about Japanese real estate!

I’m @mrlerner on Twitter.

While adding transit to Walk Score we realized there was a larger opportunity to:

1. Highlight all the great apps that use public transit data
2. Show which transit agencies do and don’t provide open data to software developers

Announcing City-Go-Round

So today we’re launching a new site called City-Go-Round where you can search for innovative transit apps and websites in your city. You can also check whether your transit agency provides open data.

Find apps in your city:
www.CityGoRound.org

Read the City-Go-Round press release.

These Apps are Rad

We had no idea how many innovative transit apps were already out there.  Here are some of our favorites:

One Bus Away: Find out exactly where your bus is in Seattle.  Check City-Go-Round to see if your city has a real-time arrival app.

Acrossair: Hold your iPhone up to see augmented-reality transit maps.  Whoa, the future is now.

Exit Strategy NYC: Perhaps the most creative app we’ve seen, Exit Strategy NYC shows you where to stand so you can get out of the subway station faster!

A huge thank you to Benjamin de la Peña and team at the Rockefeller Foundation for supporting City-Go-Round and public transit on Walk Score.

• Cleveland, OH Regional Transit Authority
• Kansas City, MO KCATA
• San Diego, CA North County Transit District

Kudos to these forward-looking transit agencies!

But get this… Over 400+ transit agencies have made their public transit feeds available to Google—but only 40+ have made that data available to the public!

Sign our petition to open up transit data.

Transit in Cleveland, OH