Walking 3.06 miles to get a beer

I've always known I don't live in a walker's paradise.

After all, I have to drive to go to the grocery store, drive to church, drive to the drug store, drive to the doctor, drive to the bookstore, drive to the movie theater.

If I need a paper clip or a new cartridge for the printer, I have to drive.

If I need a new pair of socks, I have to drive.

But then if I want a cup of coffee or need a gallon of milk, I walk to the convenience store.  If I have to mail a letter, I walk to the post office.  When I need to buy a light bulb or a bolt or a bow saw, I walk down to the hardware store.  When my car has to go into the shop, I don't have to wait around there all day or arrange a ride, I just leave it off and walk home.  On nights we order out for Chinese, I can walk down to pick it up and get it home before the steamed dumplings get cold.  The boys walk to school.  We make regular hikes to the library and routinely stroll into town for ice cream.  Our bank is three blocks away.

If we liked their pizza, we could walk to pick up a pizza for family movie nights.    If we were content to watch whatever happened to be in stock, on the way to picking up the pizza we could stop in at the video store to get our movie for family movie night.  If we went out to dinner more, there are three pretty good restaurants we could walk to.

You have to own a car to live around here, but you don't have to live in it.

So I was surprised to find out that our house scores only a 26 out of 100 on this test of walkability.

According to the creators of the website, our house rates as "Not walkable."

Mom Mannion will be stunned, though, to find out that her house, the house I grew up in, scores only a 38, which is also considered "not walkable."

Way back when, when I was just a pup, but one of four pups, with another couple of pups in the offing---Mom Mannion, who grew up an only child, wanted nine kids.  I'm not making that up.---Mom and Pop Mannion decided to build their dream house.

Before they even looked at their first lot, Mom Mannion set a rule.  The house must be within walking distance of...everything.

For five years we had lived in a little Levittown, a pleasant enough suburban neighborhood eight miles from...well, everything.  Mom Mannion didn't drive.  Still doesn't.  Being stuck in the house or else having to beg neighbors for rides whenever Pop Mannion was at work---and he worked eight miles away; no mass transit for him to take there, even if Mom Mannion had gotten her license.  It's my fault she never did, but that's another story.---poor Mom Mannion was going a bit out of her mind.  So, she insisted.  The new house had to be within walking distance of everything.

And it was.

Mom Mannion walked everywhere.  And that's how I grew up, walking to everything.  I walked to school, walked to church, walked to the dentist, walked to Cub Scouts, walked to the hobby store to buy model airplanes, walked to the drug store to buy...and this is how old I am or how old-fashioned our druggist was...ice cream sodas at the fountain.  As soon as I was old enough to count change, Mom Mannion started sending me out on errands to the grocery store.  When I was a little older and it became my job to mow the lawn, it was also my job to buy the gas for the mower, and when I needed to fill the tank, I picked up the red metal gas can with the big yellow letters GASOLINE, and hoofed it on down to the service station.  I can still hear the gas sloshing around inside the can and the thoonk thoonk of the metal sides as they breathed in and out.  Amazingly I can't feel the weight of it in my hand, although it was a five gallon can and I must have walked leaning way over to my right.

Anywhere I needed to be that I couldn't reach on foot, or I needed to be sooner than I could get there walking, I rode my bike to.

And that's how I think the world works.  Not just how it ought to work.  How it does work.

As much as I like to drive, it still annoys me every time I have to get in the car just to run what I grew up thinking of as a ten minute errand.

This is part of why I loved and still miss Boston so much.  It is a walker's paradise.  I could and routinely did walk the whole length and breadth of the town in an hour.

I was a fast walker, though.  Mornings, during rush hour, when the trolleys would be packed, I used to race whatever trolley my roommates jumped on up Comm Av to class.  Walking at my normal pace, it wasn't rare for me to beat the trolley to the Marsh Chapel T stop.

There were a lot of reasons I wasn't happy in Indiana, but at least our apartment was close to downtown and I didn't have to drive to the mall for everything.  And for a while there we got by with just one car, as the blonde could walk to her office in five minutes.  On the other hand, I had a 90 mile drive to work.  That's one way.  Our old neighborhood scores a 75 now, but I suspect that's a sign that downtown Fort Wayne has made a big comeback since we lived there.  Or a sign that because a business happens to be within walking distance of where we lived the creators of the website assume it's a business I would want to frequent.

There were a lot of marginal and seedy shops and stores downtown, including a stationery store where you had to blow an inch of dust off a pad of paper or a greeting card before you took it to the dusty counter to be rung up on the dusty register by clerks who if they weren't dusty themselves it was only because they had just been outside in a strong breeze and a grocery store that stank of rotting produce---you could smell it just passing by on the sidewalk.

Our old house in Syracuse scores a 35, which is interesting because I felt a lot more car dependent there than I do here.  Maybe that's because the boys were little and we drove them places we would walk them to now.  They were too young to leave home when we ran routine errands too, so we packed them in the car to take with us to places I might be walking to now if we still lived there.  But more likely it's that as in our old neighborhood in Fort Wayne just because a place was in walking distance that didn't mean it was a place we wanted to walk to.

Looking this over now, the scores don't make sense.  The makers of the test admit there are weaknesses in it.  It doesn't take into account certain factors and some neighborhoods are going to rate as more walkable than they really are.  But still, Mom and Pop's house should have a much higher score.  Our house here should score much higher than our old house in Syracuse.  And where we stay in Chatham should score 100, not a pale 69!  And I think I see the problem.  A walkable neighborhood, according to the test, is one in which everything you need to walk to is within a mile of where you live.

A mile?

One measly mile?

Why, when I was your age, sonny, I used to walk five miles to school, uphill, in the snow, and...

Oh, wait.  You know that's not true.

A mile is about right.  In fact, a mile is probably too far for most people.

The sad fact is that because a place is walkable, that doesn't mean the people who live in it will walk.

As a nation, we are out of the habit.

The owner of a gift shop here in town, a very nice shop I walk to whenever I need to buy a greeting card or a birthday, Christmas, or Mother's Day present for certain females in my circle of acquaintance---it's that kind of a gift shop, full of pretty stuff men pretend they don't appreciate but are secretly glad to have around the house---is something of a local historian and she told me that once upon a time, on pleasant summer evenings, people here in town would walk to the movies.  There was no movie theater here.  The closest screen was in the next town over, three and a half miles away.

A seven mile walk round-trip just to see Charlie Chaplin's latest.

There was a trolley back then too.

Nowdays, when I walk to the various places I walk to here, I can go blocks without meeting up with another person over the age of 15 or under 80, and I have to be very careful when I cross the streets.

When I run into my neighbors at the post office, they always have their car keys in their hands.

And I have yet to meet up with a kid carrying home a gallon of milk or hear the thoonk thoonk of the metal sides of a gasoline can breathing in and out.

Ok. what does your house score?

Thanks to Skippy for posting the link.

Comments

[Mike Schilling]

My house is a 75. Not a big suprise, since there's a good-sized mall less than a mile away.

My office downtown is an 88. Again not a surprise, though I notice that the bookstore it finds is "Cory's Adult Superstore".

[Claire]

My apartment is an 86, which isn't surprising since I live in a thriving urban area. The house I grew up in rates 71. We moved there because it was walkable for many things. My parents' current house is a 54, but I can tell they are missing places from town that would up the score.

[Bill Altreuter]

I'm a 68, which seems a little low. When we moved here, an express condition was that I be able to walk to the corner to buy a newspaper. I can do that. I do most of my Christmas shopping on foot, my local is an easy walk, and there are so many restaurants in the neighborhood I still haven't been to them all. I have a bookstore, and a running shop, a bagle store and a cake bakery....

68 is way too low.

[Kevin Wolf]

My present home in Salem is scored 89. No surprise there. I'm not far at all from the center of things. I have no car and walk everywhere when I'm home (and to the train when I'm leaving home).

My boyhood home scored 6. Not a surprise either. Pure suburbia: anyplace you want to get to is at least a mile away, probably more. (Which didn't prevent us kids from sneaking off to the small store in town that sold candy.) In fact, even with that score the Walk Score site counts some places you could not walk to without having to take a route that would at least double or triple the distance.

[Rana]

49, which is definitely low. There are a lot of wonderful stores less than 10 minutes' bike ride away, and the touristy downtown isn't more than a mile and a half away (the big boxes are about 2 miles away).

What I find funny about the scoring is the way that if something in a category is within the distance, it counts, even if it's nothing you'd want to walk to - knowing that we're within less than half a mile of a preschool doesn't help, both because we don't have children, and because we wouldn't be sending them to a religious Christian preschool if we did. Ditto things like the bars and restaurants - one _could_ walk under a mile to these particular representations, or one could walk longer, or bike, to ones that are much, much nicer, but which don't "count."

Plus the thing doesn't take into account the types of neighborhoods through which one might walk or choose to take a stroll. Some are physically walkable, but aesthetically, or in terms of personal safety...?

[Rana]

Oh, another thing that affects walkability but isn't considered: weather.

Walk a mile here in summer, and you will collapse. Even riding a bike is physically unpleasant. (And we're not wimpy on the AC - the house is set to 78-80 at the lowest.)

[Wren]

My house's score is a miserable 25. There's a little convenience store, the post office, the elementary school, a pricey restaurant (game on the menu) and a coffee place, all under half a mile away. But nearly everything else is four or more miles up or down the mountain. The roads are narrow, with little or no shoulder, just ditches or steep drop-offs. They're better for logging trucks than walkers. That's why when I walk for exercise, I drive down the hill to a nice walking trail.

[Juno]

49. Which I think is WAY too high - one of my great frustrations with where I live. The grocery store .4 miles away would take me through a neighborhood I would never in one million years traverse on foot and alone.

When I still smoked I would walk to the local liquor store for emergency cigarettes.
But there is a new convenience store I've never been to two blocks away - I could try that instead of driving over the bridge to Morrisville to the 7-11. Walk AND support a local business.
And next time I want some take out I could hit the local saloon - which makes a fair burger and a great salad - instead of heading up the highway.
Timely reminder that if I don't use what's there I've got no right to complain about what isn't.

[Linkmeister]

So far I'm the lowest of the bunch -- we score a 12. Even then it's got funny data; the local high school is placed 0.98 miles away. Maybe as the crow flies that's true, but I'd have to go a mile down a hill, a mile east, and a mile up a hill to get to it. There's a whacking great ravine between us.

And the nearest bar? An Orange Julius.

[Gray Lensman]

In the 19th Century, before the dubious invention of the car, people (men) walked enormous distances regularly, even if they owned a horse and buggy. Read almost anything by Sam Clemens. He and Joe Twitchell, his best friend, would walk tens of miles for pleasure. Can you imagine spending the day with Sam, "slouching along" and sharing the great conversations?

[Sabutai]

I got a 54, which is rather low. This is based on which places are inputted into Google, so it counts the nearest bookstore as a corporate behemoth seven miles away. There's a great used bookstore a half-mile away, where the owner will talk with you for half an hour about what type of books you like.

[catherine]

I got a 92, but is it cheating that i live in San Francisco? My office also scored a 92. I love to walk which is why I haven't moved to the 'burbs to buy a home.

[Exiled in New Jersey]

How about 11, and this is not some gated community but is a two store, one hairdresser and one restaurant town. Worse, one item that is 1.7 miles away has only problem: it is on the other side of the river which has no bridge thus a boat is needed. And I notice that the site has not adjusted for the new [Spring 2004] Shoprite that is closer than the Foodtown listed.

[Dan Leo]

Oh, hooray, I got a 94. But I live in downtown Philly, and I love it. I walk everywhere. When I visit my mom in Cape May Courthouse NJ I go for long walks every day, and I never see anyone else walking. You hardly ever even see joggers down there. I've told my mom that if it ever gets to the point where she can't drive (and she has to drive to do all her errands) I'm just gonna move her back here to Philly.

Are you watching Mad Men tonight, Lance?

[AZrider]

I got a 42, but noticed a number of errors in the data. They've got a school located in my neighborhood that is actually 30 miles away. The problem with walking here is for 6 months out of the year it's TOO DAMN HOT.

Tempe is actually fairly bicycle friendly, but again, it's tough to bike even a half mile when it's 110 degrees.

[Ken Houghton]

Current home: 80

Place where I grew up: 43 (school less than 1/4 mile away)

Apparently, in the past few years, the lone remaining Picture Show in town closed. They list the Public Library as having been ca. 3/4 of a mile, which strikes me as optimistic and the park that is All The Way Across Town as slightly over 2 miles.

[David Parsons]

Current house (Portland, Oregon): 88
Where I grew up (La Crosse, Wisc): 62 (and this after the death of a lot of the places I remember from 40 years ago. It took a _long_ time to calculate this score, probably because it needed to calculate all of the bars [La Crosse used to have the US record for bar density, and still has a ridiculously large number of them] before it finished up.)

[Weepingsam]

Boston and its immediate environs are, indeed, a walker's paradise: I get 94 from the places I've lived, 98 from the places I've worked.... where I live now, in practice, is probably better than that, since it is about a block from a grocery store and has a laundry in the building - a carrying score might be more important than a walking score if you want to go car free. That was true when I lived in Quincy too - the "walkability" depends mostly on how far it was from Stop and Shop and the subway: places with scores in the 70s were far better than that, for being so close to the things that count the most. Though I have come to thoroughly loathe the Boston transit system.

Of course I'm also not daunted by distance - anything within an hour of me is a reasonable walk...

Now - my parents, where I grew up, on the other hand, scored a plain 0. And well earned, even though they live in a fairly populated area. They are 4-5 miles from anything but other houses.

[Campaspe]

HA. My childhood home, in a car-bedeviled suburb in Alabama, gets a 15. A 15!!! I think I win the race to the bottom on that one. Although I did do quite a lot of walking as a child, around our subdivision and down to the local strip mall. There were no sidewalks of course--it was the 1970s, the era when we didn't need windows that opened either--so I used to startle some of the homeowners by tramping through their yards as shortcuts. In today's paranoid culture I would probably get shot.

My present neighborhood got an 82, which seems low considering that I grew up to agree with Mom Mannion. I need everything in walking distance.

[Reinder]

My house, three hundred meters away from the city center, gets a measly 54 and most of the sidebar is wildly inaccurate. For instance, the library listed is a private library in Emden, Germany, 28 miles away (itself probably an inaccurate estimate unless Emden is right on the border, which I can't be bothered to check); the public library I would actually go to is less than 500 meters away from me.

[Exiled in New Jersey]

15, Siren? As noted above, my current address tallies 11, and just checked my former house in the Town of Kinderhook NY. It scores 0....nada, nil. The site did forget that Staron's Farm Stand is less than a mile away on Route 203.

[Karen]

Really interesting. The house where I was a kid in Michigan got a 17, which doesn't surprise me. There was bupkiss near us then, when we were in a brand-new subdivision where previously there had been cornfields. Of course, in the past 40 years, one would have expected services to have sprouted nearby, but apparently not.

The next place we lived, in Fort Lee NJ, got a 71. But, for example, when WalkScore lists schools, they don't necessarily list the schools all the kids are going to. Our high school was nearly a mile and a quarter away--but we still tended to walk there. People walked more in the '70s.

Now, in Manhattan, I get a 98--which, frankly, I find pretty low. Where on earth can you get a 100 score if not in Manhattan, where everything you could possibly need is actually within a 5-minute walk?

[sabretom]

My old house scored a 58, and I lived only half a mile from your old house. Interesting.

[mac macgillicuddy]

True, Sabretom, but you didn't have to go uphill!

[Elayne Riggs]

My house's walk score is an impressive 71 out of 100. My personal walk score is about 10 feet without pain.

[daniel]

campaspe: that library in Emden, DE seems to be very popular. i live in Groningen and it is listed as the nearest library to me - 28,2 "miles" away. miles? i do live in an 88 even considering the missing or inaccurate businesses on the map as well as the lack of consideration given to public transportation or cycling.