Bike Score Map of Seattle

Just in time for Bike to Work Week, we are thrilled to launch Bike Score and our first ranking of the most bikeable U.S. cities.

See how your city ranks and vote for your city to be next to get Bike Score.

We’ll add Bike Score for the top 10 cities receiving votes between now and the end of National Bike Month on May 31, 2012.

How Bike Score Works

Bike Score provides a 0-100 rating of the bikeability of a location based on the availability of bike infrastructure (lanes and trails), the hilliness of the area, destinations and road connectivity, and the number of bike commuters.

The Bike Score for a city is then calculated by applying the Bike Score algorithm block-by-block throughout the city and weighting the scores by population density. Read the methodology details.

Seattle Bike Lanes

We collected thousands of votes for over one hundred ideas from our community on how to calculate Bike Score. Thank you!

The Bike Score methodology was developed in collaboration with Professor Meghan Winters at Simon Fraser University and Professors Michael Brauer and Kay Teschke at the University of British Columbia under a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Bicycling by the Numbers

• Americans made 4 billion trips by bicycle in 2009, more than twice as many as in 2001.
• Bike commuting increased 43% between 2000 and 2010.
• 71% of Americans say they would like to bicycle more than they do now.

Read our official press release or view the Bike Score rankings.

Bike Score: Built by bikers, for bikers!

To compute our rankings, we calculated the Transit Score of over 1 million locations in the largest 25 cities that provide open public transit data (hey Atlanta and Phoenix you’re among the largest cities that don’t provide open public transit data!).

Transit Score measures how well a location is served by public transit by assigning a “usefulness” value to nearby transit routes based on frequency, route type, and distance to the nearest stop on the route.  Type an address into Walk Score to get your personal Transit Score.

City scores are calculating by applying the Transit Score algorithm block-by-block throughout the city using a population-weighted methodology.  Transit geeks can read our detailed methodology.

Here’s a Transit Score map of San Francisco (our #2 rated city with a score of 80):

Transit Score Map of San Francisco

You can see the blue and pink area of very high scores near the concentration of BART and bus routes downtown.  You can also see circles of high scores around the various BART, MUNI, and bus stops.

The #1 city in the rankings is New York (New Yorkers are never surprised when they are #1) — and it’s just phenomenal how far you can travel in 30 minutes on transit in NYC.  Here is the 30 minute transit shed from Grand Central Station:

New York City 30 Minute Transit Shed

Heading to the gas pump is about as much fun as getting a root canal. As gas prices rise, is leaving your car at home (or not owning a car) an option?  If the answer is no, Walk Score can help you find an apartment or rental home with a great commute, with nearby public transit, and that’s close to the places and people you love.

Did you know:

• Riding public transportation saves individuals on average over $10,000 a year.
• Americans took over 10 billion trips on public transportation in 2011.
• The average annual number of vehicle miles traveled by young people (16 to 34-year-olds) in the U.S. decreased 23 percent between 2001 and 2009.

Happy transit riding!

Daily life can be hectic. So living near the places that matter most to you is important.

Our new “Gotta Have” search makes it easy to find apartments and rentals within walking distance of coffee, groceries, restaurants, schools, and more. And now, when you drill in to learn more about the location of a property, you can view nearby amenities and add your own gotta have search to find your perfect place.

Gotta Have a Car Share nearby!

Walk Score is the first apartment search to help you find apartments and rentals nearby car shares from companies such as ZipCar®, Mint® (New York and Boston), iGo™ (Chicago), City Car^SM Share (Bay Area) and Hertz on Demand™. Walk Score currently includes over 4,000 car share locations.

As the newly released Zillow Rent Index shows, rents are on the rise adding to the already high cost of living in many urban areas. And the gas, parking and maintenance costs associated with car ownership (on average over $8,000 per year) makes finding affordable living even more challenging.

Car sharing provides a convenient and cost effective alternative to car ownership and, according to a recent ZipCar study, demand for car sharing is on the rise. This trend is particularly strong among Millenials (age 18-34), 70% of whom indicate that they would drive less if there were more transportation options such as public transit and car sharing available.

Walk Score is the only site to find places to live with a great commute, great access to public transit and, now, within walking distance of a car share. #DriveLessLiveMore

Serving 4 Million+ Scores Daily

Here are some fun facts from a remarkable 2011:

• Launched the world’s first apartment search by commute time
• 10,000+ sites using our Neighborhood Map
• 100 million views of the Neighborhood Map
• Showing 4 million+ scores per day
• Ranked 2,500 U.S. cities on walkability
• And launched the Neighborhood Flyer, Commute Reports, mobile sites, and too many other features to count.

 

Matt Lerner Named 100 Most Influential People in Real Estate

Matt Named One of the 100 Most Influential People in Real Estate

We were honored that our co-founder and CTO Matt Lerner was named one of the 100 most influential people in real estate by Inman News.

Happy New Year From Walk Score!

Try it out! Just search for your favorite neighborhood, like French Quarter, New Orleans. Once in “neighborhood mode” you can mouse over the map and click the neighborhood outline to add or remove it to your search area.

There’s also a “Neighborhoods” menu option, so you can enable ‘hoods at any point in an apartment search and view a list of neighborhood names to choose from.

Want to see our new neighborhood search in action? Watch this video:

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, thanks to innovative team at Hipmunk, you can search for hotels and Airbnb listings by Walk Score!

Search for Hotels by Walk Score with Hipmunk

It’s a great implementation with a custom Walk Score heatmap so you can see which neighborhoods are more walkable. And, when this heatmap is active, hotels and Airbnb listings are automatically sorted by Walk Score. You can also view the Walk Score of each property on the hotel’s neighborhood tab. Know before you go!

Find a hotel's Walk Score

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!

We just added commute costs to our Commute Map so you can help your site visitors understand how much their commute will cost in terms of time and money.

Now you can display a commute map and commute cost calculator on your website.

Try it out on our Commute Demo page and then sign up to get started.

Here are the details of how we’re calculating commute costs.  Did you know transportation is the second largest expense for American households²?

Once you install the plugin, you can embed our Neighborhood Map in any post by typing a shortcode like this:

[walk-score-map address="3503 NE 45th St. Seattle WA 98105"]

 
The  shortcode above will display a map like this:

 

 
Give it a try and then rate our plugin on the WordPress site!

WordPress Trivia: Did you know WordPress powers 22 out of every 100 new websites in the United States? Wow!