You may have seen our earlier entry about the importance of walkability and a tool to measure exactly that, walkscore.com. Recently Walk Score has become multi-modal with the introduction of a new component, Transit Score which also ranks access to public transit. So far over 40 cities are included in this ranking system, including Cleveland, Ohio.
Transit Score uses transit agency scheduling data to create a new index. This time, it rates how good the public transit service is, taking into account factors like how far you’d have to walk to get to the nearest bus/train stop and how often buses and trains arrive once you get there. The creators of Walk Score, a company called Front Seat, have also partnered with Chicago’s Center for Neighborhood Technology to release an app that calculates exactly how much you spend on transportation, no matter what form you use.
The big question is how much will these new tools affect home-buying and development decisions. We certainly think these factors are worthy of heavy consideration.