Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I'm interested in board member's walkscore. Ours is currently 79/100, and we rent for under $800 per month. I find this pretty hard to beat since real estate in our area is quite over valued right now..A mortgage and expenses and taxes to buy a home (better than the dwelling we are renting) and increase the walkscore probably would not be possible right now.

Mine is 43.

Average rent (houses on 1/4 lots) right around here is $800-$1000 a month. At the end of my street I have a not-very-great grocery store, but i can get the basics. Also under a mile to go the drug store, a 5 and dime type place, a dollar store, a chinese restaurant, a McDonald's and a tobacco store. I mean, what more do you need? Oh, no liquor store within walking distance. Damn!

96/100. Not really sure why the missing 4 points..

A four bedroom flat rental is $5500+/mo.

Of course, in true ERE fashion I've opted to just van dwell and move around the neighborhood as called for.

6
Hence the bicycle...

Amenities within my area, 2 parks, 1 pub, a convenience store (too expensive, only ever buy milk there), a garden center and a pharmacy, oh and a fish and chips shop

80/100. Not bad, especially since I've recently moved from a 60/100. However, I take these numbers with a grain of salt, since my country is not officially supported by the website. I pay €390, but this is student housing (21m2)

@vexed87: wow, a 6/100 is really low! Does that mean that you don't have any supermarket, restaurant, library etc close to you?

67, home value is about 150k

Within one mile is a small downtown, Lake Michigan beaches, harbor and marinas, large grocery store, a good number of restaurants and a hospital. Within two miles, Menard's and Wal-Mart.

5

I don't entirely get the score, though. I can easily walk to the township building, park, library, swim club, and schools from here. The pharmacy and grocery store are 2.5 miles away, but there's a walk/bike path the entire length. Is that distance really considered 'unwalkable''?

78 walk score for my apartment. Though, I can't hit the $800 a month level in this area...unfortunately.

@jenny
I don't think they would consider 2.5 miles walkable.

https://www.walkscore.com/methodology.shtml

Points are awarded based on the distance to amenities in each category. Amenities within a 5 minute walk (.25 miles) are given maximum points. A decay function is used to give points to more distant amenities, with no points given after a 30 minute walk.

The site suggests that 2.5 miles would be a very low score.

70, with the "groceries" category dragging down the score.

21 - 'car dependent' / Almost all errands require a car.

Similar to jennypenny's comment, this is waaaay low. Looking at their Time Travel Map, I think I understand why: all of the nearby things are just outside the 20 min walk line (thanks for the methodology, Chad). For example, FOUR grocery stores*, two pharmacies, ~10 restaurants, the metro station, and maybe ~40 retail shops/coffee houses are within 1.5 miles and on neighborhood streets. Plus a bike path that takes me straight to work.

*There are a lot of residential highrises in the area, so lots of grocery stores.

Case and point: my SO walks to work, I bike to work. We use the car maybe once a week for big grocery trips. I actually think we are in an ideal location, because we are close to things but without the noise or traffic.

We are fortunate that both myself and my wife walk to work (less than 1km to get to our workplaces..in different directions tho), and other rental suites very close by can rent for a few hundred dollars more per month. I lived in a bachelor suite previous to my wife and I moving in together at the adjacent apartment block for around $400-$450 per month for 6 years.

88/100

1 BR unit paying $700/mo in a trendy Baltimore neighborhood. A little diligence on Craigslist goes a long way.

Did not realise they did this in the UK. We are countryside. Overall 26 - its only that high because there is village shop and school within walking distance. Our rental property is in the nearby town that we may relocate to when older and is 77. I would say that is understating. It takes 5 mins to walk to pretty much anything you might need and we like that feeling. The road that I am eyeing up for buying into is 96 (another reason to like it).

My walk score is 88 but a kid on a bike mistook me for somebody who might be in the market for black market Xanax when I was walking home from the pool yesterday evening, so....?

Currently living in a place with walkscore 29, but that seems unfair. I'm in an unsupported country though, so I imagine that's why. That said, it is definitely not as good as the last few places I've lived (in a diff country), which scored 73 and 93. I'm here because rent is insane in this city (I could live permanently in a hotel in most first-world cities for the same price, I think).

My commute to work is an hour each way at the moment, which I do not appreciate. But there are definitely shops close by, and my judo club (walkable, about 10 mins). Only one restaurant, though. Public transport is OK. Cheap if you get an annual pass.

LOL... the current residence has a walkscore of 2 and the retirement residence has a walkscore of 7. Considering the second one has a minimum grocery roundtrip of 20-24 miles compared to the current 6-10 miles, I'm shocked it scores higher! At least the nearest gas pump is only 2 mile roundtrip.

3. But Monday I did a hundred mile round trip commute with no car, and today it's about 75 miles. Combination of 18 bicycle miles (minimum, going farther today) and the bus. My employer buys my bus pass.

But at 3 bucks a gallon, it only costs about 5 bucks to drive my car. '04 Honda Insight. That's a good way for me to put on weight.

It would be nice if the walkscore could take into account whether you're walking on nice paths or through a park. For example, when I lived on an island, it was a good 45 minute walk to get to the 'village' which was all the amenities = grocery store, library, coffee shop, restaurants, art gallery, etc. But because I'm hiking through trails to get there and it's so enjoyable, I'd give it a walkscore of at least 50.

I guess my biggest problem with walkscore is that it doesn't really know/differentiate between a quality grocery store and a crappy one. It thinks the nearby crappy corner store with minimal selection should contribute to the score.

My location has a walk score of 54, a transit score of 48, and a bike score of 46. Being willing to walk longer distances than most people is certainly an advantage.

IMO, the bike score methodology is too strict; it seems to only consider very close distances that would quickly be surpassed by someone riding a bike.