Matt Lerner is CTO of Walk Score. Matt bikes to work every day and recently broke his bicycle chain in half pulling his two boys in the bike trailer. Follow him on Twitter @mrlerner.
A food desert is a neighborhood without access to healthy food. Why does this matter? Living in a food desert can lead to higher levels of obesity and other diet-related illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease1.
Walk Score helps you make more informed decisions about where to live, like finding an apartment or buying a home within walking distance of a grocery store.
Many cities are making access to healthy food part of their general plans. For example, Washington D.C.’s sustainability plan sets a goal of having 75% of residents within a 5 minute walk of healthy food.
But how many people can walk to a grocery store in 5 minutes?
Today, we’re announcing a new ranking of the best and worst U.S. cities for access to food based on our database of local places and our Travel Time API and ChoiceMaps technology.
Our ranking measures access to healthy food by calculating the percent of people in a city who can walk to a grocery store in 5 minutes. The ranking below includes U.S. cities with more than 500,000 residents.
The best and worst large cities for food access.
Areas in green indicate where you can walk to a grocery store in 5 mins.
Note that rentals and real estate in a city such as Tuscon is much less expensive than in a food-friendly city such as Philadelphia.
Don’t See Your City? Urban planners and researchers, please contact us to unlock your city.
To calculate the percent of residents in a city with access to healthy food we use a variety of data sources and technologies. Our population data and city boundaries come from the U.S. Census. Our list of grocery stores comes from a mix of Google, Localeze, and places added via the Walk Score website. We calculated millions of walking routes for this ranking with our Travel Time API.
Our goal is to only include grocery stores that sell produce. We filter out convenience stores with a combination of algorithmic filters and crowdsourcing. That said, it’s harder than it sounds to get a clean list of grocery stores. If you see a convenience store miscategorized as a grocery store, please click the “Edit place” link and help us improve our data quality.
Our rankings are proximity based and do not include the cost of food. Some studies have shown that shoppers select supermarkets based on price as well as proximity2. For example, people with lower incomes may travel farther to shop at a cheaper grocery store.
Unlike other food desert maps, our maps are dynamic and updated in real-time as our database of underlying grocery stores changes.
Walk Score data is being used by a growing number of cities and planning districts. “The City of San Jose is using Walk Score data to start tracking performance metrics for our general plan such as how many people can walk to fresh food and parks,” said Joseph Horwedel, Deputy City Manager of San Jose.
Walk Score offers data in spreadsheet or shapefile format for every address in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. We have also aggregated our data for every city and ZIP code in the U.S.
The City of San Jose is using Walk Score to measure access to fresh food and parks.
The Michigan State Housing Development Authority is using Walk Score as part of their low-income housing tax credit application.
The City of Toronto is using Walk Score as one of 15 criteria to measure healthy neighborhoods.
The City of Phoenix is using Walk Score to analyze light rail station performance.
Following on our ranking of the best U.S. cities for public transit earlier this year, today we’re announcing our first ranking of the best Canadian cities for public transit.
We’ve calculated the Transit Score of 38 Canadian cities and almost 1,000 neighborhoods to help you find an apartment for rent or home for sale with a better commute and more transportation choices.
In comparison to the United States, Toronto and Montreal score better than any large U.S. city except New York and San Francisco. And Vancouver, with a Transit Score of 74, trounces nearby Seattle (our home town), with a Transit Score of 57.
Click on the cities in the list above to explore the best neighborhoods for public transit.
The rankings are based on our Transit Score algorithm, which measures how well a location is served by public transit. Addresses with a Transit Score of 90-100 are considered a “Rider’s Paradise.” Places with a score of 70–89 have Excellent Transit. Scores of 50–69 indicate places with Good Transit and ratings of 49 or lower indicate areas with Some or Minimal Transit options. Read the Transit Score methodology.
There’s growing evidence that living near good public transportation is a smart decision. For example, living near public transit can save you money. Transportation is the 2nd largest household expense in Canada. Taking public transit is cheaper than owning a car. And living near good public transit might just make you happier — after all, nobody likes being stuck in traffic.
Walk Score Apartment Search helps you find apartments near public transit. For example, here’s a map of rentals within a 30 minute public transit commute of Downtown Vancouver.
Apartments within a 30 minute public transit commute of Downtown Vancouver.
Our award-winning Walk Score iPhone and Android apps let you take Walk Score on the go in Canada. You can use our apps to get the Walk Score of any location and find apartments and rentals.
Commuting is expensive and nobody likes to be stuck in traffic. Most of us want to live close to the people and places we love.
Or let’s say you’re looking at homes for sale on any of the 30,000 real estate sites that use Walk Score. You can click on the score to visit Walk Score and start comparing the homes you’re considering.
To get started comparing commutes, just click the Favorites link at the top of this page. You can compare travel times with and without rush hour traffic, by public transit, walking and biking.
Commuting by car is expensive. Be sure to consider the cost of your car, gas and parking when deciding where to live. The average American spends over $9,000 per year on their car. That’s the second largest expense for most households — and a lot of coin!
U.S. commuters waste over 4 billion hours per year in traffic. Commuting 10 extra minutes per day adds up to a full day over the course of a year! Imagine spending that time with your friends and family, working on your favorite hobby or volunteering in your community instead.
There’s even evidence that short commutes make you happier.
Homes with high Walk Scores tend to make good rental property investments.
How do you calculate travel times? Good question! Our rush hour drive times give you an accurate picture of travel times during peak commute hours. Rush hour drive times are based on average traffic in your city. The rush hour times we show give you a 90% probability of arriving on time. In other words, there’s a 10% chance you’ll have a longer commute due to an accident, snow storm, Super Bowl parade, etc.
We’ve also collected transit data from over 300 transit agencies to calculate public transit times and we use road network data from Open Street Map to compute walk and bike times. Read more about our Travel Time API.
We look forward to helping you find a better commute!
Today we’re announcing a new ranking of the best cities in the United States for public transit.
We’ve calculated the Transit Score for 316 cities and almost 7,000 neighborhoods to help home shoppers and apartment hunters find places to live with better commutes and more transportation choices.
Where Can You Live Car-Free?
Here are the best U.S. cities for public transportation.
How does your city compare to other cities in your region? See the full list of cities.
The older Northeast cities with established subway systems have the highest scores. West Coast cities that have made more recent investments in light rail also score well. Although cities in the south have a low average Transit Score of 38, there are many neighborhoods with high scores such as Downtown Houston or the Brickell Neighborhood in Miami.
There’s growing evidence that buying a house or renting an apartment near public transit is a smart idea.
First, it’s likely a better investment. The National Association of Realtors found that home values performed 42% better when they were located near public transit1. In Boston, a recent study showed that home prices near public transit outperformed the region by 129%2.
Living near public transit saves you money. The average American spends $9,859 per year on their car3. Did you know this is the equivalent of a $135,000 mortgage?! Transportation is the second largest expense for American households4.
And living near good public transit might just make you happier5 — after all, nobody likes being stuck in traffic.
Thinking about buying a new home instead of renting? Real Estate doesn’t come cheap in transit-friendly cities like San Francisco or Washington DC but if you can swing it you’ll certainly reap the rewards.
Walk Score helps you find apartments near public transit with our unique search by commute time features. Download our iPhone app or Android app to find a place to live with a better commute.
Our ranking is based on the average resident’s access to public transit in a city. To compute our ranking, we calculated the Transit Score of over 1.9 million locations in 316 cities. We use a population-weighted methodology to compute the average Transit Score for a city. Our top 10 cities list includes cities with populations over 500,000 people. Read more about Walk Score methodology.
We’re excited to launch our new apartment and rental search app for Android phones and tablets today!
With our new Android app you can search for apartments and rentals on the go and see the Walk Score of any address.
Of course, the app also provides great neighborhood information including maps of nearby places and photos of thousands of neighborhoods.
Download the Walk Score Android app.
Walk Score helps you find a place you love where you can drive less and live more.
If you’re an iPhone user, check out our app which is currently featured in the iTunes Home Sweet Home section.