By Elizabeth Spike

Walk Score is a mobile app that runs on both iphone and android devices. It is an index that estimates the walkability of your address.

Here’s how it works.  Enter your home address and the app will produce numerical scores out of 100.  The first number is your walk score, and it indicates how walkable your home address is to restaurants, bars, coffee shops, grocery stores, parks, schools and more.  The higher the score (closer to 100) means you live somewhere you can walk easily to these amenities because they are within a mile from home. The second and third numbers give you transit and bike scores.  The same scale applies, so the higher your transit and bike scores are, the more options and access you have to get around town.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
For example, my walk score is 87.  That means I can walk to get most of my errands done. My transit score is 48; I won’t have many public transit options to get around town.  And my bike score is 76 which seems pretty good and will probably get higher if the City of Houston adopts a bike plan to create multi-modal true complete streets for all users.

The app also includes an interactive map with pins to identify the type of amenity: restaurant, shop, park and so on.  It also includes a street view of the address you entered, a travel time map, and a map of bus stops. The maps are powered by Google so they will seem familiar and intuitive to many internet users.

Walk Score is free of charge. It is a fun way to explore cities and their neighborhoods. I recommended the app to a friend of mine so he could find the perfect neighborhood in his future home city of Savannah, Georgia. He appreciated making data-driven decisions before planting roots in an unknown city.  Today, I'm sharing this app with you---so find out how walkable your neighborhood is and maybe get outside and walk!