LogFAQs > #971719878

My city gets 63 for walking, 60 for transit, and 59 for biking. I feel like that's a bit generous, but I guess I would probably have said about 6/10 for walking, so that's not far off the mark. It likely gets points for being relatively dense (the municipality as a whole is MUCH less walkable, given the degree of car-dependent suburban sprawl) and having sidewalks pretty much everywhere, but it still leaves quite a lot to be desired in terms of overall pedestrian safety and comfort.

That's definitely inaccurate for transit, though. They've got a map of "how far you can travel in 30 minutes on public transit," which is ridiculously generous. Knowing people that have relied on buses to get to/from some of those places, it's usually more like 1-1.5 hours (for a <20-minute drive), thanks to infrequent buses, buses just plain not showing up sometimes, and awkward transfers. Most of our buses never run any more often than every 20 minutes, even at peak hours, and many are upwards of an hour.

That biking score is also pretty generous. We have a decent amount of bike lanes if you look at the total distance, but it's highly fragmented and there isn't really any sort of cohesive bike corridor through the city. There's one street that's officially one, but as I mentioned, it has to cross a busy road without lights, so it's largely useless if there's any traffic. The next-closest thing is a mixed-use trail that does actually run most of the length of the city (and will complete that route within the next few years when a certain bit of major road construction finishes), but it's got a 200-metre climb at one end that's not exactly realistic for anyone that isn't an avid cyclist to tackle. When I bike (which was quite a bit until breaking my elbow on the way into work a few months back, then winter hit before I got back into it), I'm mostly just on the roads because there isn't any bike infrastructure that will do the job for me.

Still, not bad by North American standards. It could be a lot worse.