City Walkability

[lpetrich]

These Are the 10 Most Walkable Cities of 2017 - Walk Score Blog
New York City: 89.2, San Francisco: 86.0, Boston: 80.9, Miami: 79.2, Philadelphia: 79.0, Chicago: 77.8, Washington DC: 77.3, Seattle: 73.1, Oakland: 72.0, Long Beach: 69.9

Why Walkability Matters

Our goal at Redfin and Walk Score is to help people find the right home, not just any home, and what often makes a home “right” is location. Walkability is about convenience, quality of life and everything outside the four walls of a house. When you live near the people and places you enjoy most, you can spend less time and money on transit and more time doing what you love.

Most Walkable Cities in the United States, Canada, and Australia on Walk Score
Canada: Vancouver: 78.0, Toronto: 71.4, Montreal: 70.4
Australia: Sydney: 62.6, Melbourne: 57.4, Adelaide: 53.6

Also lists the most transit-friendly cities (max: New York City: 84.3) and the most bicycle-friendly cities (max: Minneapolis: 81.9). The page has a map that shows all the 141 cities with populations over 200,000 that were rated.

I analyzed the numbers, and I found a strong correlation between walkability, transit-friendliness, and bicycle-friendliness. Cities typically range from low in all three to high in all three.

The most walkable US cities were in the northeast and west coast, with the most walkable Canadian ones nearby. There were some islands of walkability elsewhere in the US, like Miami, New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Denver, and Honolulu, but most of the other US cities were very bad -- even the big ones. Curiously, the in-between Canadian ones were not as bad as the in-between US ones. Mapping onto political tendencies, it is as if Democrats prefer walking and Republicans prefer driving. Charles Koch would be proud.

 

[lpetrich]

How to make cities more walkable - Vox

You’ve probably seen the term “walkability” thrown around in relation to cities, neighborhoods, and even apartments. A city’s walkability, per Walk Score, is determined by analyzing how many errands can be done without a car, and cities with the highest scores (like Boston, New York, and San Francisco) often come with an incredibly steep cost of living.

...
Walking also costs the city very little, unlike cars and even public transit. According to Speck’s book, if a resident takes a bus ride, it may cost them $1 but costs the city $1.50 in bus operation. If a resident decides to drive, it costs the city $9.20 in services like policing and ambulances. When a resident walks, the cost to the city is a penny.

People also tend to spend more money in walkable cities, stimulating the local economy. A 2008 report of San Francisco’s downtown found that public transit users and walkers spent less on each trip downtown but made more frequent trips, which meant they spent more money overall. Those in cars spent more money on one trip but frequented downtown less.

The 35 Most Walkable Cities in America | Money Talks News

The ability to walk to work, schools, shops, restaurants and errands is growing in importance to real estate shoppers. The millennial generation, especially, loves walkability.

Can you get there on foot?

The demand for walkable neighborhoods is driven by real estate shoppers and residents looking for relief from long commutes and by the old-fashioned desire to walk to work, schools, shops, restaurants, clubs, schools and parks.

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Cities have many reasons to work at improving their Walk Scores. Walkability affects residents’ health. More walkable neighborhoods have higher rates of physical activity and less obesity and air pollution from traffic, researchers say.

 

[lpetrich]

What does a walkable street look like? | AmericaWalks

Here’s a handy checklist to help you tell whether a street is built mostly for cars:

Are there multiple lanes of traffic in each direction?
Are the lanes of traffic considerably wider than the average car?
Do most of the businesses along the street provide their own parking lots?
Is there a large distance between the street and the businesses or homes lining the street (because of parking, landscaping, etc.)?
Are the intersections controlled with traffic signals?
Does the street lack sidewalks?

If you answered yes to one or more of the above questions, you’re looking at an auto-oriented street.

...
Here’s a checklist that will help you identify a people-oriented street:

Does the street have no more than one lane of traffic in each direction?
Are the lanes narrow (not much wider than the average car)?
Is parking either directly on the street or behind the buildings?
Are the homes and businesses close to the street with amenities (like signage and windows) sized for people?
Would it be relatively safe and feasible for a person to cross the street at any point, including the middle of the block?
Are there sufficient sidewalks?
Are there people out on the street? (No, seriously; is there even a single human being?)

I wish to add whether or not there are benches on the sidewalks. IMO, that is important, because we cannot rest on our feet very well.

 

[lpetrich]

Where is the world's most walkable city? | Cities | The Guardian

From New York’s cafe squares to Melbourne’s laneways to the walled Fes el Bali, these pedestrian paradises combine safety, beauty and comfort. Now urban planners are taking note as they seek to hand back cities to the walkers

...
Recently, some cities have made great strides: from the ambitious public squares programmes of New York and Paris to the pedestrianisation of major streets (realised in the case of Strøget in Copenhagen; proposed in the case of London’s Oxford Street and Madrid’s Gran Vía.

Jeff Speck’s grandly titled General Theory of Walkability states that a journey on foot should satisfy four main conditions: be useful, safe, comfortable and interesting.

...
North American, Australian and Canadian cities, which were built for cars, have the challenge of retrofitting walking infrastructure.

Older European cities, which were built with walking in mind, have good fabric. This can make them walkable even if they lack pavements, crossings and other infrastructure for pedestrians – as is the case in Rome, says Speck.

It is not just the likes of New York City and Paris. It's also Madrid, Spain and Medellin, Colombia and Melbourne and Guangzhou, China and Seoul and London.

Though Dallas and Beijing have gone backward.

Dallas has 46.2, 39.7, 46.4 for walkability, transit, and bikes, much less than (say) Philadelphia with 79.0, 66.8, 65.6.

The San Francisco Bay Area has this curiosity. San Francisco: 86.0, 80.3, 70.7, Oakland: 72.0, 56.2, 64.5, San Jose: 50.5, 41.2, 59.3 -- some sizable variation.

As well as cities where a conscious effort has been made to improve conditions for people on foot, some cities are walkable because of their historic centres. There’s Florence in Italy, Vientiane in Laos, Kyoto in Japan – but the most striking is perhaps Fes el Bali, a walled section of Fez, Morocco’s second largest city.

...
Alves says tackling cars in cities is key to encouraging walking.

“Noise and air pollution are the biggest problems for walking and safety,” he says. “The less traffic you have in a city, the safer it is. Speed is very connected with safety and noise and pedestrians feel much more comfortable to sit down when a street is 30kph or 20mph. When we have low traffic the quality of walking and cycling increases automatically.”

One also needs other non-automotive forms of access, like public transit, and high walkability is correlated with high transit access.

 

[lpetrich]

I'm not alone in noting that polarization of walkability in US cities. Cities in "blue" (pro-Democratic) states are often much more walkable than those in "red" (pro-Republican) states. From Why liberals like walkability more than conservatives | Grist

Pew asked whether respondents would rather live in an area where “the houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away,” versus one where “the houses are smaller and closer to each other, but schools, stores and restaurants are within walking distance.” The country is evenly split, with 49 percent choosing the former and 48 percent the latter. But the political divide is dramatic: 75 percent of “consistently conservative” respondents prefer the suburban sprawl model, and only 22 percent prefer the walkable urban design. Among “consistently liberal” Americans, the numbers are reversed.

The article then discussed why that split might be the case. Could this be a side effect of other reasons for where they like to live? Or could it be for more direct reasons?

Denser, more walkable areas are more communitarian: Everyone invests in sidewalks and transit, people hang out on stoops and in shared public parks instead of private backyards. It stands to reason that conservatives, who hate sharing, would prefer to invest their money in bland little private lawns rather than a wondrous communal paragon like New York’s Central Park.

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Liberals value diversity, integration, and interactions with different kinds of people more than conservatives do. In contrast, Pew found conservatives are more likely than liberals to say it’s important to them to live near only people who share their political values. Liberals also tend to be younger, more highly educated, and more cosmopolitan, and college-educated millennials are flocking to dense coastal cities.

The Obama Administration's efforts to support urbanism did not get very far, from opposition by Republicans. Their 2012 party platform stated that he wanted "replacing civil engineering with social engineering as it pursues an exclusively urban vision of dense housing and government transit." Elsewhere on the Right, a writer for the National Review claimed that Obama had secret plans to attack suburbia, and I've found

The War On Cars - YouTube from "Prager University":

There is a war against cars in America. Regulators want Americans out of cars and onto trains, buses, and bicycles. Why? Because of what cars represent -- freedom. Automotive expert Lauren Fix ("The Car Coach") explains.

In Will: Why Liberals Love Trains, commentator George Will has a similar conspiracy theory.

To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.

Time was, the progressive cry was “Workers of the world unite!” or “Power to the people!” Now it is less resonant: “All aboard!”

 

[TSwizzle]

"Progressives" despise people that don't conform to their dumb plans. They want us to live in multi story rabbit hutches no bigger than 100 square feet and not move outside of a two mile walking radius unless it is on bicycle or a government approved transportation device. Fly ?!!! Out of the question peasant.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

"Progressives" despise people that don't conform to their dumb plans. They want us to live in multi story rabbit hutches no bigger than 100 square feet and not move outside of a two mile walking radius unless it is on bicycle or a government approved transportation device. Fly ?!!! Out of the question peasant.

OK. Good luck with all of that ...

 

[Politesse]

"Progressives" despise people that don't conform to their dumb plans. They want us to live in multi story rabbit hutches no bigger than 100 square feet and not move outside of a two mile walking radius unless it is on bicycle or a government approved transportation device. Fly ?!!! Out of the question peasant.

LOL what? Conservatives have been trying to murder trains for the last century. They're pro-oil, not pro-transportation.

 

[Tharmas]

...

Also lists the most transit-friendly cities (max: New York City: 84.3)

...

Ha! As a disabled person, the NYC subways are unusable for me, as are most NY busses. I'm not the only one who thinks so! See here and here. I have to hire cars or use cabs and spend hundreds of dollars getting around in my annual visits to see the grandkids.

 

[bilby]

Where I live, it's only a ten minute walk to the shops. But in this climate, a ten minute walk is pretty arduous for nine months of the year.

Riding a bile might be OK, if the law didn't mandate the pointless wearing of an esky on my head.

But until they have footpaths and/or bike lanes with air conditioning, I will be taking my car.

 

[lpetrich]

Here's an alternative to driving in hot weather: cooling vests. TOP 13 Best Cooling Vests Reviewed 2019 + Beginner's Guide There are several companies that make them and there are four main types of them.

• Water-Activated Evaporative Cooling Vests
• Phase Change Cooling Vests
• Ice Pack Cooling Vests
• Gel Pack Cooling Vests

 

[Horatio Parker]

I'm surprised Miami beat Chicago and Philly.

 

[bilby]

Here's an alternative to driving in hot weather: cooling vests. TOP 13 Best Cooling Vests Reviewed 2019 + Beginner's Guide There are several companies that make them and there are four main types of them.

• Water-Activated Evaporative Cooling Vests
• Phase Change Cooling Vests
• Ice Pack Cooling Vests
• Gel Pack Cooling Vests

Sounds ghastly.

 

[RavenSky]

I'm surprised Miami beat Chicago and Philly.

Keep in mind that this is for the city of Miami only. The full county would fail miserably for walkability and transit and cyclists.

My neighborhood, in the historic downtown district, has a 98 walkability score, and a transit score of 100. I can walk to grocery stores, shops, restaurants, pharmacies, etc. I have a bus stop and a MetroMover directly across the street, and a trolley stop down the block. The free MetroMover takes me north to the Performing Arts District, or south to the Financial District, or west to the train station. From the train station, I can get to the airport, the Health District, south to the 'burbs, or north to the next two counties (and eventually to Orlando). If I did not have to have a car for work, I could easily live here without a car.

By contrast, the house I used to own in the suburbs had a walkability score of only 65, and a transit score of 27. It's one of many reasons I moved.

 

[lpetrich]

London and Oslo Took On Cars, But the Key was Investing in Alternatives - "Whether cities choose congestion pricing or regulations, they must expand transit, cycling, and pedestrian spaces"

However, that doesn’t mean all cities are following the same playbook to reduce car use. One of the initiatives growing in popularity is congestion pricing, essentially a way to charge drivers for using the roads. Singapore, Stockholm, London, and most recently New York City have chosen this path.

By contrast, other cities are choosing to instead regulate how cars are using urban space by limiting their use of certain roads and taking away parking spaces. For example, Paris closed the road along the Seine and repurposed it for people; Toronto gave streetcars priority on one of its main downtown streets; and Oslo removed on-street parking spaces in its city center.

Both of these approaches can be pursued successfully, but regardless of the policy, there’s a common denominator to their success: investment in alternatives. Whether cities adopt congestion pricing or regulations to restrict vehicle use, they must improve transit services, expand cycling infrastructure, and make new pedestrian spaces so residents can enjoy the streets they’re regaining the right to use. London and Oslo show how this can be done.

 

[ronburgundy]

London and Oslo Took On Cars, But the Key was Investing in Alternatives - "Whether cities choose congestion pricing or regulations, they must expand transit, cycling, and pedestrian spaces"

However, that doesn’t mean all cities are following the same playbook to reduce car use. One of the initiatives growing in popularity is congestion pricing, essentially a way to charge drivers for using the roads. Singapore, Stockholm, London, and most recently New York City have chosen this path.

By contrast, other cities are choosing to instead regulate how cars are using urban space by limiting their use of certain roads and taking away parking spaces. For example, Paris closed the road along the Seine and repurposed it for people; Toronto gave streetcars priority on one of its main downtown streets; and Oslo removed on-street parking spaces in its city center.

Both of these approaches can be pursued successfully, but regardless of the policy, there’s a common denominator to their success: investment in alternatives. Whether cities adopt congestion pricing or regulations to restrict vehicle use, they must improve transit services, expand cycling infrastructure, and make new pedestrian spaces so residents can enjoy the streets they’re regaining the right to use. London and Oslo show how this can be done.

Like the direct and indirect effects of helmet laws, these efforts to "reduce congestion" are complicated too. Many efforts to make cities more "bike friendly" actually increase vehicle congestion. I've seen this in Chicago, which in the last couple years has created "protected bike lanes" on major roads. Protected bike lanes put a barrier between the bike lane and traffic lane, but this means it takes twice the road space. Since most roads cannot simply be widened, they have done it by turning two lane roads into 1 lane roads and/or eliminating the space needed for cars to go around those turning left. In fact, cars slowing down to turn right can no longer get over to the right as they approach the turn. This has been done on major traffic arteries and intersections, almost doubling travel times on those roads. That means more gas used and more pollution that probably far outweighs the small decrease in driving due to the increase in biking.

Weather also dictates the net effects of such efforts. The weather in Chicago makes biking unpleasant, dangerous, or downright impossible most days of the year. The benefits of those efforts don't exist on most days, while the congestion and travel time costs of those efforts exists every day.

 

[Sarpedon]

Yeah, bike lanes suck. The better solution is to take a narrow or underutilized street and make it all bike/pedestrian, whether all the time or just during particular times. Bikes sharing a street with buses is also good. Given that the bus drivers need special training anyway, it is easy to teach them how to share safely with the bikes. The fact that buses are large, slow and predictable also make them safe road-mates.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

London and Oslo Took On Cars, But the Key was Investing in Alternatives - "Whether cities choose congestion pricing or regulations, they must expand transit, cycling, and pedestrian spaces"

However, that doesn’t mean all cities are following the same playbook to reduce car use. One of the initiatives growing in popularity is congestion pricing, essentially a way to charge drivers for using the roads. Singapore, Stockholm, London, and most recently New York City have chosen this path.

By contrast, other cities are choosing to instead regulate how cars are using urban space by limiting their use of certain roads and taking away parking spaces. For example, Paris closed the road along the Seine and repurposed it for people; Toronto gave streetcars priority on one of its main downtown streets; and Oslo removed on-street parking spaces in its city center.

Both of these approaches can be pursued successfully, but regardless of the policy, there’s a common denominator to their success: investment in alternatives. Whether cities adopt congestion pricing or regulations to restrict vehicle use, they must improve transit services, expand cycling infrastructure, and make new pedestrian spaces so residents can enjoy the streets they’re regaining the right to use. London and Oslo show how this can be done.

Like the direct and indirect effects of helmet laws, these efforts to "reduce congestion" are complicated too. Many efforts to make cities more "bike friendly" actually increase vehicle congestion. I've seen this in Chicago, which in the last couple years has created "protected bike lanes" on major roads. Protected bike lanes put a barrier between the bike lane and traffic lane, but this means it takes twice the road space. Since most roads cannot simply be widened, they have done it by turning two lane roads into 1 lane roads and/or eliminating the space needed for cars to go around those turning left. In fact, cars slowing down to turn right can no longer get over to the right as they approach the turn. This has been done on major traffic arteries and intersections, almost doubling travel times on those roads. That means more gas used and more pollution that probably far outweighs the small decrease in driving due to the increase in biking.

Weather also dictates the net effects of such efforts. The weather in Chicago makes biking unpleasant, dangerous, or downright impossible most days of the year. The benefits of those efforts don't exist on most days, while the congestion and travel time costs of those efforts exists every day.

I can’t imagine how bikes could reduce any congestion in Chicago, even if imagining the roads could take the bike traffic with no issue.

Akron tried a pilot lane takeaway for a bike program and abandoned it in a month or two. You need a separate bike trailway and spur it in the city.

 

[TSwizzle]

Yeah, bike lanes suck.

Sometimes they suck because the planners put them in place not so much to accommodate cyclists but to torment car drivers. At least here in LA anyway. There have been a number of roads where a lane has been sequestered for a bike lane which just causes more congestion. And there are very few cyclists on the road here.

 

[Sarpedon]

You can put it another way: The planners get their arm twisted to add bike lanes, and they put it where they think it makes sense, not how it would be best for either bikes or cars.