Poll of the Day > How walkable is your local area?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Top tier: You can walk to get ALL your amenities (this doesn't count appliances and such) and still be happy to walk some more

Bottom tier: You need a sub-car to get to your main car, and even then it's a 10+ minute drive to get across the street

As far as North American neighbourhoods go, not bad, but there's a lot of room for improvement. There are a couple of grocery, hardware, and drug stores within a 10-minute walk, which I'd call the upper limit for walking for such things, but getting to them involves walking along some fairly busy, pedestrian-unfriendly streets that definitely push into stroad territory (though they do at least have sidewalks, at least when nearby construction projects don't take them over). In theory, I live near a designated bike route, but that bike route has to cross a very busy 4-lane street without a light and has zero actual infrastructure to make it bike-friendly aside from being a relatively narrow street (which discourages through traffic), so it's thoroughly useless except to travel on either side of that street. By and large, it ticks the boxes necessary to claim that it has the bare minimum pedestrian infrastructure, but it's got a long way to go to actually be really pedestrian-friendly, and it's very obviously been designed with cars in mind and everything else as an afterthought.

Not really walkable The downtown area is walkable, but you drive to get to the area And even then, its not really many living areas. Theres like this pub place, and a coffee shop, and some stores But not really places to live. There is this building where people can rent out rooms, but I dont think youre suppose to live there. I have a friend who rents out a room to do his art stuff in I did take a nap there, though

That said, people still do walk quite often Mostly because they have to. But many of them just walk in the grass because half the places in town dont even have sidewalks

It would be about a 20 minute walk to the nearest grocery store. Not really feasible in the winter, but possible in the summer.

My job would be about a 4 hour walk one way, though.

Suburbs with no sidewalks, so basically non existent unless you like the 2 feet of space between the cars and peoples yards, or you just walk in the yards.

In the city near me: extremely walkable.

I live in a suburb with good sidewalks and trails...however it's too sprawling to actually walk anywhere for a functional reason (I.e. to get food or entertainment or necessities). I do live unusually close to a good Italian restaurant and there's a CVS/gas station/upscale grocery about a quarter mile away, but for various reasons (winter, schedule, awkward exit from my neighborhood) I rarely walk or bike to any of them.

Probably 4 of 10 or something like that.

I live in the area that's mostly for retired seniors. The main part of town is miles away from here.

Within walking distance, there's a grocery store, a dollar store and my bank across the street once you leave my neighborhood. Anything else is over a mile away. Nearest convienence store is around a mile and a half.

There's an indoor shopping center a couple of miles from here, a sorta mall, although its not really a big fancy one like you see in cities.

There's no fast food places any closer than 5 miles, around where the nearest interstate entrance is.

I'm like a twenty minute walk to two grocery stores, a rite aid, multiple restaurants, bars, a hardware store, and more.

I live in a city, only downside is my whole neighborhood is a steep hill so it's a pain walking anywhere

Top tier

There are sidewalks but stuff are far away

I live in cap hill. it's really great for the US. I have three decent grocery stores 10-15 minutes away, and everything else is pretty perfect. Tons of bars, restaurants, good public transit, book stores, coffee shops, etc

Horrific. The nearest grocery store is about an hour's walk away, one way.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/9/6/AAGJd8AAENI8.png

Top tier.

The grocery store is a 5 minute walk. Plenty of bars and restaurants are within walking distance. I even walk to work daily and my wife's business is even closer to home. I can throw a stone and hit the nearest hospital. All of this without hills.

Yes, I got just about everything within a 5-10 minute walk from my house with sidewalks everywhere

It is not great. There is a decent amount of stuff close by, but a lot of areas don't have sidewalks and are along major roads. There are also a lot of areas without street lights, so it is doubly dangerous at night or in any inclement weather.

Very walkable. A shopping area is about half a hour walk from me. I have shops five minutes away from me too. Plenty of pubs, takeaways and stuff. Even if you don't want the city life a half a hour walk from my place can take you to the countryside too. Very nice and relaxed I find.

agesboy posted...

Horrific. The nearest grocery store is about an hour's walk away, one way.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/9/6/AAGJd8AAENI8.png

Something I forgot to mention- this website also usually does a walk score, but my area is so fucking bad it doesn't even try

https://www.walkscore.com/

agesboy posted...

Something I forgot to mention- this website also usually does a walk score, but my area is so fucking bad it doesn't even try

https://www.walkscore.com/

i didn't know about that website, is cool

Bottom-tier.

I live along a highway in farm/ranch country miles from even the nearest gas station. Theres no infrastructure for walking at all.

I live in Erfurt, Germany (about 200K inhabitants) near the city center.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/8/AAAIAjAAENJ6.png

Without a car, I die. Period.

According to that site my town's walkscore is 31, which I thought was pretty good

Lokarin posted...

i didn't know about that website, is cool

I feel like it lies, it gave my town a 36 in walkability even though I can get to just about anything in 5-10 minutes

Muscles posted...

I feel like it lies, it gave my town a 36 in walkability even though I can get to just about anything in 5-10 minutes

I think it's cuz it's based on roadmaps and user submissions... it also depends 'where' in the town you are, on my local map it showed a wide variety of sample sites. Where I am is rather high, but at the outskirts it's a solid 0.

Lokarin posted...

I think it's cuz it's based on roadmaps and user submissions... it also depends 'where' in the town you are, on my local map it showed a wide variety of sample sites. Where I am is rather high, but at the outskirts it's a solid 0.

If I just put my zip code, I get a score of 62. If I put my complete address, I get 91.

I get 28 for car and 35 for bike if I just input my city... which is actually hilarious, not even what it considers the city center is fit for foot traffic

Edinburgh, Scotland

it's walkable. don't have a car.

99/100 walkscore, pretty sure most European major cities will be up there

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.

I live in the suburbs where everything is far away and buses and trains take forever to come

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/0/6/AAZ6OdAAENMO.jpg

I live on a farm 12 miles from town. Lots of places pretty to walk but with all the cows you gotta watch your step. In happy here, pretty and quiet on this mountain so in my POV it is pretty close to top tier.

Even the nearest neighbor is at least a 20 minute walk.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/2/6/AAQwHjAAENMi.jpg

It would take about 20 minutes to walk to the nearest convenience store and 30 minutes to the nearest grocery store.

FARMLlVERS RISE UP

The nearest grocery store would take about 2 hours to walk to, or 35 minutes by bicycle. One way. And that's a crappy little local small town grocery store that charges like $5 for a gallon of milk.

The nearest big chain grocery store, HyVee, would take over 4-1/2 hours, or an hour and 15 minutes on a bicycle. Part of that would require going down a highway with no hard shoulder. It's 17 minutes by car.

The nearest Walmart is 6 hours away on foot, over 18 miles.

I live near an area with great stores like Von Maur, Macy, Sephora etc and great eating places as well like Chick Fil A, Chipotle, etc so I'm, grateful for that.

And they are in walking distance so that's a win-win.

I've had to walk 30+ minutes in each direction for food. It's not that bad when you plan well for it, walking is great for your mind and body, too. I can understand how having to do that long term would become bothersome for that person, however, especially in poor weather, in dangerous areas, constant traffic, etc;