BUMP!!!

wonder if this is still relevant?

it should be, not in respect to fuel prices, but to the relative state of the economy.

saving is saving, be it fuel or just the general cost of operating a vehicle. and this is not even to mention the health benefits of walking!

I rate ZERO. Nearest thing is a school, 1.4 miles away, but that's 1.4 miles of 55-mph highway.

I don't like putting my address into random websites, but my address would rate pretty low. There's a bar at the end of the street, and then it's 5 miles of 45mph country road before there's anything else -- a restaurant in one direction, or the sleepy little downtown in the other.

25, but my wife walks the 3 km into downtown every day and I bike commute to work 50+ days per year, which is 17 miles away.

I checked a couple of addresses. I checked the house I grew up in, that rated a 6. It shouldn't be that high, but 2 blocks from my mom's house is a lady that makes wedding cakes out of her house. That was considered a "restaurant" in walking distance. Then the 7-11 that's a mile and a half through dense woods (5 miles by road) was listed as a grocery store 1.5 miles away - walking distance.

The place I'm at now there's nothing for about 3 miles, but somehow it thinks there's restaurants & shopping just a mile away. That scored a 7.

Oh well...

-Jay

Of course, the system has huge scores for urban dwellers, but not everyone can - or wants to - live in a dense city. If all farmers felt guilty about a low walkscore, they would leave their farms and we'd all starve.

farmers are a different story though. they grow their own food so their grocery store is the field beside their house. they also can/jar a lot of food as well.

I know my grandfather used to only go to town about once a month. his coment was he didn't need to go any more often. he farmed tobacco but had other small crops for personal consumption. it's not really a garden when the size is in acres.

also, my score was a zero. nearest thing is about 2 miles away

Walkscore seems to me to be more a measure of urban density than anything else. While it is not particularly accurate in rating exactly what types of businesses are nearby (like calling the local thrift a book store or completely missing the hardware store just 0.1mi from my house), I think it's a fair assessment of convenience from one urban area to the next. Obviously throwing in the wild cards of rural self sufficiency completely throws it out of whack, but most people living the rural life wouldn't be living there if such scores were really that important to them.

We rate a 68 out of 100 which intuitively seems about right. Our area has moderate build density without much in the way of high rise buildings, and few home lots much over 1/4 acre.

I put in my neighbors' address. ;)

I rated a zero. I guess that's the price I pay for trying to get away from it all.