Wish you could spend less time in your car? Our new Apartment Search features are for you!

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)

Now, with Walk Score Apartment Search you can search for apartments by commute time.

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!

Today we’re announcing our 2011 ranking of America’s Most Walkable Cities and Neighborhoods! Read the official press release.

View the full list and vote on what you think are the most walkable cities

New York vs. San Francisco

New York eked out a lead over San Francisco, which was the most walkable city in our 2008 rankings but, before you get too cocky New York, you’re only ahead by .4 points.

This is such a close race that we’ve built a user voting system so you can tell us which city you think is most walkable!

Cast your vote now by clicking “Like.”

And remember, we use the official city borders from the census.  So when you rate the walkability of NYC, you have to include Staten Island!

Explore the walkability of 2,500 cities

We also calculated the Walk Score of 2,500 cities and over 10,000 neighborhoods in the United States.  Our new map view lets you explore cities by Walk Score, population, and region.

Walk Score distribution graphs for neighborhoods in Atlanta, GA

• The 2011 rankings use the latest 2010 population data from the U.S. census and neighborhood boundaries from Zillow
• Read a detailed description of the methodology used in our rankings
• Learn about using Walk Score data for research and planning

We’ve been hard at work creating a preview of Street Smart Walk Score—an enhanced version of Walk Score that uses walking distances rather than crow-flies distances to calculate your score.

Street Smart Walk Score also looks at the underlying road network to compute the number of intersections per square mile and average block length. These two measures are great indicators of walkability.

How it Works

For every Street Smart score, we generate hundreds of walking routes to find the nearest amenities. We also analyze the underlying street data to calculate the number of intersections and average block length.

Street Smart Walk Score gives more weight to amenities that are highly correlated with walking. In addition, multiple amenities in each category count towards your score—for example, we count 10 restaurants to reflect the depth of choice that walkable neighborhoods offer.

And, when you look up a Street Smart Walk Score, we give you a report showing exactly how many points each amenity contributed to your score. This makes the algorithm easy to understand and transparent.

We developed Street Smart Walk Score in conjunction with the Walk Score Advisory Board and Dr. Larry Frank, Professor of Sustainable Transportation at the University of British Columbia, and with funding from Active Living Research, a national program office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Street Smart Example

Is this water clean enough for swimming?

No swimming necessary.

You asked: “Why don’t you have neighborhood rankings for my city?” and “How come my city doesn’t make your list of most walkable cities?”

We listened: We’ve processed over 8 million data points and now have Walk Score heat maps for the 2,500 largest U.S. cities and neighborhood walkability rankings for many of these.

So whether you’re searching for Aberdeen (Maryland, South Dakota or Washington) or Zanesville, Zephyrhills or Zion, or virtually anywhere in between, we’ve got you covered.

And if you’re spending Turkey Day in Topeka or decking the halls in Denver, be sure to check Walk Score before you go – the nearest pub, coffee shop, gym or book store could be just a short walk away.

Walkability map of Minneapolis & St. Paul

After our Most Walkable NFL Stadiums post, we asked “what should we rank next?”

Convention centers was one of the most popular responses. So here it is:

As the folks at Convene, The Magazine of the Professional Convention Management Association, asked, do you know your meeting’s Walk Score?

This list of convention centers is from Cvent and only includes convention centers with over 650,000 square feet of meeting space.

Just in time for opening day (OK, technically we missed opening night last night), Walk Score ranks the most walkable football stadiums.

And the winner is… The St. Louis Rams – Edward Jones Dome!

St. Louis is the only city to rank in the top 3 on both this list and our list of most walkable baseball stadiums.

Ever wished Walk Score included post offices, hospitals, or bike shops? Or what about art galleries or laundromats or donut shops?

Now you can create a custom Walk Score map with the amenities that matter most to you.

Just type an address, click the Customize Map tab, and begin building your map.

[Changing amenities will not change your Walk Score.]

Let us know what you think.

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.

We’re excited to announce a new grant from Active Living Research, a national program office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The goal of the Active Living Research program is to support research to prevent childhood obesity and support active communities.

Under this grant, we will evaluate modifications to Walk Score that include using walking distances rather than as-the-crow-flies distances as well as deeper analysis of the road network to determine pedestrian friendliness.

As part of this collaborative grant, we will be working with Urban Design 4 Health and Dr. Lawrence Frank, a leading walkability researcher from the University of British Columbia.

It’s energizing to see the interest in Walk Score from the academic and policy communities, and we look forward to continuing to partner with researchers and organizations such as CEOs for Cities, Dr. Gary Pivo, and Dr. Lucas Carr.