What's your Walk Score?

[nevermore]

But that's your problem and utterly irrelevant to the neighborhood itself, which again, is what this website is interested in. Also, given the distance they're measuring (under a mile), its likely no faster to drive than it is to walk.

Yeah, I know that in downtown Ottawa, driving from where I am to the grocery store would be a pain in the ass, what with all the one-way streets, slow traffic and the difficulty of finding a good spot to park. On the other hand, I can walk there in less than 10 minutes. Can't argue with that.

Yeah, if I drove less than a mile, chances are I'd end up parking right back in the same damn parking spot and walking to the store anyway. If I didn't lose it while trying to find something closer to the store...

My current apartment's walkscore is 94, which has a lot to do with living somewhere that looks like this. Wouldn't trade it for anything else, either.

Hmm. I think they must deduct points for crime or something, as my area is far denser than that...

Downtown Ottawa is deceptively dense. We don't really have any super-tall towers, but we tend to have a lot of medium-rise construction, so we have a lot of stuff packed into our core areas, even if they don't look like Manhatten or downtown Toronto.[/QUOTE]

Oh, yeah, we don't have high rises at all outside of the immediate Harbor vicinity. We have 3-5 story rowhouses mostly with maybe one mid-sized, generally mid-century or earlier, apartment or condo building every other block or so. I was just referencing all the space wasted for parking lots.

 

[Warp Coil]

48. Car-dependent. Sounds about right. There's a ton of stuff in Columbia but everything spread out.

 

[Theodore Jay Miller]

88/100; I just moved into a new apartment a couple of weeks ago, and one big factor for me was having places within walking distance.

 

[Canadave]

Oh, yeah, we don't have high rises at all outside of the immediate Harbor vicinity. We have 3-5 story rowhouses mostly with maybe one mid-sized, generally mid-century or earlier, apartment or condo building every other block or so. I was just referencing all the space wasted for parking lots.

Don't even get me started on how much space we waste on parking...

 

[nevermore]

^Yikes. you people need to learn the value of a parking garage. Especially an underground one...

48. Car-dependent. Sounds about right. There's a ton of stuff in Columbia but everything spread out.

Which is sad, given that the whole point of Columbia was to build a walk-friendly planned suburban community...

 

[PlixTixiplik]

Oh, yeah, we don't have high rises at all outside of the immediate Harbor vicinity. We have 3-5 story rowhouses mostly with maybe one mid-sized, generally mid-century or earlier, apartment or condo building every other block or so. I was just referencing all the space wasted for parking lots.

Don't even get me started on how much space we waste on parking...

Ottawa, like essentially all cities, has ridiculous zoning requirements that stipulate the minimum number of parking spaces that each type of business or dwelling must provide. Did you know that funeral parlors are required to provide 0.75 spaces per 100 m2 of floor space? These requirements are not based on any empirical data and represent the largest (of many) subsidies that drivers receive. In fact, drivers in the US are subsidized between 135-386 billion dollars per year in the form of "free" parking (99% of all car trips end up in a free parking spot), and that doesn't include the external costs such as pollution and congestion from solo drivers and lost opportunity costs from the valuable land used up for parking lots. You can see a powerpoint presentation by urban planner Donald Shoup (the guru of parking economics) here, read one of his papers here, and see what he thinks the solution is.

 

[M'Sharak]

Walk Score:

17 out of 100 — Car-Dependent

There are places I could walk, but it's not very practical to do so most times. Even some of the places less than a mile distant involve a lot of uphill and downhill walking and, while I can get to the usual supermarket without having to deal with the really drastic grade, a walk of a mile and a half back with a full load of groceries and no sidewalks for much of the route doesn't appeal at all, even if it is downhill on the return trip.

 

[Braindeer]

My area got 78 out of 100 — "Very Walkable"

I'd actually put it higher than that. I walk everywhere, and there isn't often an occasion where I need to get a bus or ask someone to drive me. It's a half hour walk to work, in the city centre, and I'll happily walk an hour each way to get to industrial estates on the outskirts if I can't get what I need in the city. The only time I'd need to get a bus is if I'm going to the University library on the other side of town. It'd be about a two hour walk otherwise! I'm not doing that carrying books!

ETA: I put in my old address in San Francisco and it got a 98! Amazing! Is that the highest so far? Dang, I miss SF.

 

[shivkala]

Walk Score:

14 out of 100 — Car-Dependent

That sounds right. We're probably a good 3-5 miles from the nearest shopping center. And that's walking in the heat and humidity of Florida! Plus, very few sidewalks (a personal pet peeve of mine)!

 

[Geckothan]

Walk Score: 20 out of 100 — Car-Dependent

It's not really car-dependent at all though, there's a bus stop literally right outside my house and it's a 15-20 minute ride to a fairly large town and a further 20 minutes on the train straight into the middle of London.. the site also failed to factor in the supermarket, library and chemist that are right down the road (it thinks the first two are 4 miles away and the latter is 1 mile away ). Fun site though.

 

[Warp Coil]

^Yikes. you people need to learn the value of a parking garage. Especially an underground one...

48. Car-dependent. Sounds about right. There's a ton of stuff in Columbia but everything spread out.

Which is sad, given that the whole point of Columbia was to build a walk-friendly planned suburban community...

Well, I can see how that might work in theory. With all of the walking trails and the village centers, it is possible for someone to get around on foot. I live pretty close to my village center and have walked there several times. There's a grocery store, a pharmacy, a bank, a dry cleaners, restaurants, etc. all right there. I can see an advantage. Except that I rarely, if ever, shop there. All of the big box stores and the malls are 10 minutes away by car. And that's where everyone goes, including me. Plus, none of the entertainment (bowling alley, gym, movie theater) is within walking distance. So really, it just doesn't work. Thanks for trying, Columbia. Better luck next time.

 

[Canadave]

^Yikes. you people need to learn the value of a parking garage. Especially an underground one...

48. Car-dependent. Sounds about right. There's a ton of stuff in Columbia but everything spread out.

Which is sad, given that the whole point of Columbia was to build a walk-friendly planned suburban community...

Well, I can see how that might work in theory. With all of the walking trails and the village centers, it is possible for someone to get around on foot. I live pretty close to my village center and have walked there several times. There's a grocery store, a pharmacy, a bank, a dry cleaners, restaurants, etc. all right there. I can see an advantage. Except that I rarely, if ever, shop there. All of the big box stores and the malls are 10 minutes away by car. And that's where everyone goes, including me. Plus, none of the entertainment (bowling alley, gym, movie theater) is within walking distance. So really, it just doesn't work. Thanks for trying, Columbia. Better luck next time.

I think the problem is the level of disconnect between the ideas of "suburban" and "walkable". The way we think of them, they're almost mutually exclusive.

Suburban, to us North Americans, means everything is low density and spread out, away from the so-called crush of the city. While walkable means that everything is dense and close together, with gridded streets, and residential arranged closely around "main streets" with transit, shopping, entertainment, etc. Unfortunately, when you try to meld them together, I find that the suburban half tends to win out... comprimises are made in the name of cars, and development becomes just a little too spread out to be truly walkable any more. It's sad, but that seems to be the way of things.

 

[An Officer]

ETA: I put in my old address in San Francisco and it got a 98! Amazing! Is that the highest so far? Dang, I miss SF.

I think I got a 97 the other day, so yep, you're top right now.