Walkscore.com can tell you if your neighborhood has the goods so you can walk, not drive, to everything you need.
staff and wire reports | Posted: Monday, October 15, 2007 7:00 pm
With all the talk these days, you’d think that walking might save the world.
It’s good for your health and the planet … have you heard that before?
But just how “walkable” is Lincoln? Can you really get around only on foot, with everything you need within walking distance, depending on where you live?
The Web site Walkscore.com is here to help. Type in an address on the site and a Google map pops up. Blue icons show you nearby restaurants, stores, schools, coffee shops, bars, restaurants, parks and more. A list identifies the map destinations and their distance from your starting point.
And the site ranks the spot on a “walkable” scale of 0-100, with scores above 90 a “walker’s paradise,” and scores below 25 signifying no destinations within walking range, which the site creators consider to be anything farther than a mile. (Obviously, if you’re a bicyclist, especially in our town of fabulous trails, your neighborhood can be considered “rideable” at a longer range.)
The creators admit, however, the scoring system isn’t perfect: It measures distances “as the crow flies,” so it won’t account for something like, say, Holmes Lake lying between you and the nearest grocery store. It also doesn’t account for how safe a neighborhood is, which can make using this site for help in moving to a new city a little dicey. And of course it doesn’t account for the fact that for some of us, a mile is a long walk when it’s 10 degrees (or 110) outside.
Also, it’s only as accurate as Google maps, so you can’t blame this site for considering Haymarket Park to be a “park” instead of a baseball stadium, and some of the other unusual classifications that only we Lincolnites will identify.
We spent some time playing on the site and ranked the “walkability” of 10 locations.
Here’s how they scored:
1. Ninth and O: 92/100. Not surprisingly, the best walkability site of all we tried. Pretty much anything you’d want is within a mile. No grocery stores, you say? Walkscore.com will tell you to go to La Corona at First and O (0.62 miles away), and India and La Mexicana groceries at 17th and P (0.57 miles away).
2. First and Adams: 28/100. Interstate 180, Oak Lake and State Fair Park mean this site is geographically isolated, so the lower score isn’t a big surprise.
3. 17th and Van Dorn: 54/100. El Sitio restaurant and Irvingdale Park are within spitting distance, boosting this spot’s rating. Grocery stores, a coffee house, schools and shopping aren’t too far away, either. And who knew that Ray’s Luv Shop (14th and South) is considered a “bookstore”!
4. 27th and Pine Lake Road: 69/100. If you can live without a hardware store and a bar within a mile, this would be a good neighborhood for you.
5. 27th and Vine: 63/100. A good score, not surprisingly, for a central Lincoln address. The farthest amenities are downtown and campus features (like Nebraska Bookstore). Notice how blue icons fill the map north on 27th Street and west on O Street.
6. 35th and M: 38 /100. We were looking for a spot that was more residential but close to O Street and generally in the middle of town. The main amenities within about a half-mile of here are St. Theresa’s School and Church, Runza and Woods Park.
7. 48th and Huntington: 88/100. Surprise! This area between UNL’s East Campus and Nebraska Wesleyan scores almost as high as downtown addresses. The Joyo at more than a mile and a half away is the farthest jaunt.
8. 48th and Calvert: 74/100. Not as “walkable” as the neighborhoods around the city’s other colleges, but this is still a pretty good score. Everything you’d want (except a movie theater) is within three-fourths of a mile.
9. 56th Street and Old Cheney Road: 75/100. Given all the options in Edgewood, this score isn’t surprising. This score is skewed, too, because the map didn't recognize Edgewood movie theater.
10. 70th and Adams: 28/100. The YMCA and Sportscasters Bar are very close, but most everything else is at least a mile away.
11. 70th and A: 51/100. A good location for schools, parks, fitness and restaurants. But other stores (grocery, retail and coffee houses) are too far to be “walkable.”