What's Your Walk Score?

I got this from a message board where I like to spend some time. If you enter your street address at the top of the page, the site calculates a 'walk score' for your location. With the rising price of fuel, and everything else, walking is good in a lot of ways - it can save fuel, it's free exercise, and it helps you make healthier choices sometimes - unless you live next door to a grocery store, it decreases your desire to purchase lots of soda pop or ice cream. (One is too heavy to carry, the other one melts!)

Anyway, go here and see how your place rates.

On a scale of 1-100, 100 being fabulous, we got a 2. Mleh. I'm not surprised, because we live in a somewhat rural area, void of sidewalks or bike trails or any of that. I'm still trying to figure out if it's feasible to park at one store and walk to a couple others. It could work in the little town near us (maybe), but if I go into the city, things are fairly spread out.

Ultimately, our best bet is to consolidate as many errands together as we possibly can, and cut down on trips, even to the little town near us. One nice thing about having a garden and some hens is that we have several months in the Summer when we don't run out of eggs, lettuce, fresh vegetables, etc. I keep a halfway decent pantry too. So, the primary strategy here is simply to stay home more.

Tell me, how often do you go to town - not to work, because that's arbitrary - but how often to you hop in the car to go pick up groceries, run errands, all that? I think I'm going to track that for a few weeks, and see how often I go...compared to how often I think I go. Then, I'm going to see what I can do to cut down. I know I can do better.

Comments

frau424 said…
haha, i got a big fat 0 how about that.
i have to drive 15 miles one way to work 5 days a week, and i try to run all my errands on my way home from work.
i don't like running into town just for one little thing, really i never do that.
but walking to town.. nope, out of the question... guess you can't have it all. peace and quiet and a store right around the corner.
cool website though, thanks for sharing
hugs
D.
stacey said…
i scored a 5 but i live out in the middle of nothing too. i just got the bike out this morning and the goal is to be able to bike around town by the end of summer, i am seriously out of shape.
i usually end up in the car once a day even just to go to they gym, partially because i do not feel comfortable biking through some of the parts of town i would have to ride through. i try to keep my errands limited to just one trip a day, today i bit the library, post office and then gym. i won't be out in the car the rest of the day. i also try to stop and do things on the way home from work as much as possible, and plan my errands so i am not zipping back and forth all over town. sadly i also let my grass grow to about ankle height before i mow it now. i used to mow it once a week religiously.
of course i have made other cut backs to compensate for the gas, no lattes, getting movies from the library instead of renting them, getting books from the library instead of buying them. i have even cut back on buying yarn! (insert shocky eyes here)
Tayindawin said…
Hey Girlfriend,
Just did the walk score for my little stretch of hell. It was 35. No surprise there. Very cool program.
Thanks,
Teresa
Anonymous said…
We got a 45 out of 100. funny thing is we don't do that much walking. I guess it has to do with the fact that I am terrified everytime we step out on a sidewalk. I have seen to many cars on the sidewalk, in a car wreck to feel 'safe' on any pedestrian walkway. so now that we have a wiifit, we get our exercise that way. when you come you got to try it out.
Anonymous said…
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Unknown said…
My walk score is 45… I was rather upset with it. And I was surprised to know that there is another score called drive score to evaluate my house. I found the way to calculate it online at Fizber site (http://drivescore.fizber.com/ ).
I’ve got much better results – 51:).

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