Tag: Kaid Benfield

WalkScore update

Dan Allison2 Comments
SacWalkScore43
SacTransitScore33
SacBikeScore68

WalkScore has released for Sacramento a new walk score, 43, transit score, 33, and bike score, 68. New York is the top walk score city at 92, followed by San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia and Miami. New York is the top transit score city at 81, followed by Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Philadelphia. Portland is the top bike score city at 70, followed by San Francisco, Denver, Philadelphia and Boston. Sacramento compares very well in bike score, at 68, but poorly in walk score and transit score.

For the Sacramento region, walk scores in various neighborhoods range from 5 to 92 (of 100), transit scores range from 11 to 65, and bike scores range from 38 to 100. In general, the scores track with each other, walk friendly = transit friendly = bike friendly, however, there are exceptions. You can look up your neighborhood on the chart linked below, or go to WalkScore for a lot more detail on Sacramento. The top five neighborhoods are Boulevard Park, Downtown, Midtown/Winn Park/Capital Avenue, Marshall School and Mansions Flats, all in the city of Sacramento. WalkScore exists largely as a sales tool for houses and apartments, but it has broad applicability as well.

SacramentoNeighborhoodsWalkScore

Reference: The top 10 US cities for public transportation (Kaid Benfield, NRDC Switchboard, 2014-01-28)

And, I’m happy to report that where I live, on the border between Midtown and Downtown is:

MyWalkScore82MyTransitScore62MyBikeScore99
And that’s why I live here!

Abogo

Dan Allison2 Comments
Abogo

A reference to the Abogo calculator from the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) in Kaid Benfield’s post today sent me there. Abogo is based on CNT’s Housing + Transportation Affordability Index, which I was familiar with, so I’m surprised I’d not noticed Abogo, but now I have.

At right is the calculator result for where I live. Hard to read the legend, but the dark green is less than $1000 per month. Of course I spend a good deal less, $100 for a transit pass plus about $20 a month for bicycle maintenance, but the numbers seem reasonable for others who live in downtown/midtown.

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Blogs I read

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I read one transportation blog religiously: StreetsBlog. The four sub-blogs, for New York, where it originated, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Capitol Hill, generate their own blog posts, but also serve as an aggregator for transportation blog over North America, and to a small degree the world. The news is of very local issues, as specific as neighborhoods and streets, city, state, regional, and national issues. Some are serious, some irreverent. Some are offered by advocacy organizations, some by professional planners, some with academic expertise, and some by interested individuals.

Among the blogs linked from StreetsBlog that I often click through to are Kaid Benfeld on NRDC’s Switchboard, The Transport Politic, Grist, and How We Drive. Kaid, as well as some other bloggers on Switchboard, cover the political, environmental, and livability aspects of transportation, and the Transport Politic covers similar ground but is written by a planner, Yonah Freemark. Grist addresses environmental issues through several bloggers, including a former editor at StreetsBlog, Ellie Blue. How We Drive is by Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), probably the best book I’ve read on the culture of driving. I’m sure you’ll find something interesting on StreetsBlog.

And while you are there, click on over to StreetFilms, a wonderful collection of short and entertaining spots on improving transportation system and livability.

Let me know what blogs interest you!