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Walk Score Adds Transit

Posted by Clark Williams-Derry

11/05/2009 09:45 AM

Popular walkability ranking now includes bus stops and rail stations.

Walk Score, which has become the most widely-used measure of pedestrian friendly neighborhoods in North America, has added a new trick: they're now incorporating transit data into their walkability ratings. So in addition to stores, restaurants, parks, and the like, Walk Score now treats nearby bus stops and rail stations as key ingredients of a walkable neighborhood.

What makes this extra nifty is that Walk Score has already partnered with a bunch of national real estate websites to incorporate walkability rankings into real estate listings. So now, all those real estate sites will have data on transit access, too.

Sadly, Walk Score's new transit ranking only works in places where transit agencies have made their "transit feeds" -- the data on transit locations and schedules -- freely available to the public. So if you live and walk in Portland, OR, you're in luck. Same goes for a handful of smaller transit agencies around the Northwest -- Island and Jefferson counties in Washington, Tillamook County in OR, and Humboldt County California. But even though King County Metro and Vancouver, BC's Translink publish their transit data for Google's use, their transit feeds are kept private--so third parties like Walk Score can't get access to them.

So the good folks behind Walk Score have set up an online petition to ask local transit agencies to release their transit service data to the public. (I've signed the petition -- and if you care about walkability and transit, you should too!)

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user kworth30: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kworth30/ / CC BY 2.0]

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Comments

Posted by Matt Lerner 11/05/2009 02:39 PM

Kudos to Seattle real estate sites Zillow (www.zillow.com), Windermere (www.windermere.com), and Estately (www.estately.com) that show Walk Score on all of their property listings.

These are the greenest real estate sites in Seattle--especially now that Walk Score shows nearby transit.

Posted by Nancy Weinstein 12/03/2009 09:51 PM

Why do you say Metro does not make public its transit locations and schedules? Doesn't trip planner do that? I've used it many times, with great success. I must be missing something, since this seems so obvious to me....

Posted by eldan 12/03/2009 10:21 PM

Nancy: they let you search their data, but they only release the actual raw feed to established partners (Google Maps and Onebusaway; possibly others). I think Walkscore needs access to the raw data to do what they're doing for Portland.

Posted by Charles 12/07/2009 02:12 PM

Looks like we can call off the dogs. I saw this post and followed the petition link and also researched a bit more. what I found indicated that KC Metro is actually allowing this to happen, so I contacted Walkscore. Here is what they told me today:
"We are in the process of adding KC Metro and it should be up in a week or two."

So good work!