1 post tagged “walkscore.com”

Walkscore.com recently ranked America's most walkable neighborhoods and cities. Where does your hometown land in the rankings? And how much do you actually find yourself walking instead of driving?

Well, this doesn't tell me anything I don't know. My address gets a rating of 68 of 100, or "somewhat walkable." But then, a lot of places in walking distance aren't on the map. It's really outdated and even just straight-up inaccurate. I'd be willing to bet people looking for the Albertson's at the north end of Parkcenter would be disappointed to find the company headquarters (I'm not sure it's still the company headquarters after the buyout, either) there, for example. I'm sure someone has a good reason to go there, and walking might be a good way to get there, but that grocery store icon is misleading, since I really doubt anyone's going to want to sell you a head of lettuce and some toilet paper there. It also misses the fact that there are two Albertson's stores much closer than that one. It lists one of them as a Sav-On Drug store and it misses the other entirely. It even misses all the fast food places on Broadway, although the Starbucks is there. Too bad there's also a McDonald's, Del Taco, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Domino's.

So the score would probably be a bit higher if it found all the things that are actually on this end of town, some of which are a lot closer than the next closest thing.

Also, things that could potentially lower it: the Mormon church is not really what I'd call a library. Lakewood Montessori is not what I'd call a general purpose school. King's Komix Kastle is run out of some guy's garage pretty much whenever he wants to run it. I also don't even know if he still does that. And Payless Shoe Source for "clothing and music"? Why are those two things even the same category? And why are shoes defined as "clothing"? Wouldn't a place have to sell more than just one type of clothing to qualify? To be fair, the Payless is inside of a ShopKo, which it didn't find on there. Also, there's an M&W Market on Gekeler? Really? Because what's really where that marker is, is a little residential cul de sac with some houses on it. Across the street is an apartment complex. Maybe there's a little outlet in there or something that I'm not aware of, but I'd hardly call that the same thing as a grocery store.

So basically, I think the score would be a lot more accurate if the maps were. I would agree with the general gist of "somewhat walkable." If you can walk a mile or two in hot weather, you can live in the more central areas of Boise without a car, but I still wouldn't recommend it unless you do a lot of bike riding. If you live out on the southeastern fringes, like Columbia Village or Surprise Valley or Harris Ranch, or in the west side sprawl, forget it.