Stories tagged with "walking"

Walkscore: Now With Added Features & Analysis

Posted by Glenn on June 4, 2009 - 10:25am in The Oil Drum: Campfire
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: cities, community, mixed use zoning, new urbanism, small towns, walking, walkscore [list all tags]

A couple of years ago, I wrote about Walkscore as a handy tool to estimate the walkability of a specific address anywhere in the US. There are a few limitations to the tool, but by and large it hits the mark in determining which areas have the potential to be great walkable communities where you don't need to own a car versus totally auto-dependent areas.

Now they have added a whole lot of new features, analysis and commentary to the site and it's worth a look.

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Walking Towns: Universities, Military Bases & Pre-Auto Urban Areas

Posted by Glenn on November 18, 2007 - 11:30am in The Oil Drum: Local
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: college, military, transportation, walking [list all tags]

In one of the recent threads, I asked for good local statistical sources and got a few gems, including the Bikes at Work census data commute-to-work mash-up by zipcode. So I ran a quick search on the highest walk to work locations in the US for towns over 1000 population. The results were surprising to me in the lack of diversity:













Location POP % Walk to work
Naval Academy, Maryland 4264 82.99%
Houghton, New York 1730 67.84%
Alfred village, New York 3926 60.98%
West Point, New York 7138 60.25%
Air Force Academy, Colorado 7536 59.63%
Parris Island, South Carolina 4841 58.45%
Lackland AFB CDP, Texas 7132 58.09%
New Square village, New York 4707 57.28%
Hamilton village, New York 3510 55.56%
Avalon city, California 3181 52.79%

They are almost all locations that are centered around an institution, like a university or military academy where many people are housed very close to their classes or jobs and the concentration of people and buildings conspires to reduce the amount of spaces that could be used for roads and parking of automobiles.

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Poll: How do TOD readers transport themselves?

Posted by Yankee on May 15, 2006 - 11:21am
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: automobile, bicycling, hybrids, poll, suv, transportation, trucks, walking [list all tags]

Over time, I think we've gotten a sense of how TOD readers feel about various transportation issues. Now I've put together a poll to find out what the reality is: how prevalent is driving (and how many miles a day do people drive)? How many people have a hybrid? How many people use a bike as their predominant form of transportation? What about subways, light rails, or even walking?

Update [2006-5-15 16:25:5 by Yankee]: I usually read Treehugger everyday, but I must have missed their post from the other day called "Have You Reduced Your Dependence on Cars?" 90 Treehuggers left comments, and a lot of their sentiments seem pretty similar to the ones seen here.

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Walking vs. Bus vs. Subway

Posted by Glenn on October 1, 2005 - 11:07am in The Oil Drum: Local
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: bus, new york, new york city, oil, peak oil, public transportation, subway, walking [list all tags]

As readers of this page may know, I have about a two mile commute from my apartment to my office. It's basically a straight shot down Second Ave. I have several commuting options, which is unique in America where most people rely completely on their car.

When I first moved here about 6 months ago I reflexively took the 4 or 5 train from 86th street to Grand Central Station, but in the NYC Summer it started to get really, really oppressively hot in the tunnels, so I took the bus a few times and much to my surprise, it was a pleasure! Typically I had a seat the whole way (something I never got on the Subway), although it was slower due to traffic, particularly around the Queensboro Bridge off ramp at 59th and 2nd Ave.

Then I started to walk more to get a little exercise in. Below you can see the breakdown of the various considerations in choosing which transportation to take.

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