Sailor

What's your Walk Score?

Came across Walkscore yesterday. It is a Google Maps mashup which takes an address, plots out all of the restaurants, grocery stores, and other common personal services within "walking" distance, and then scores the location on a scale of 0 through 100 for walkability. Pretty neat, not surprisingly the places I've lived or am living in in Brooklyn and Manhattan score well into the "90s". There's some glitches though, which I'll describe after this table I whipped up of the walkability of places I've lived in the past 40 years (ignore the fact that as a one year old I was unlikely to walk anywhere):

Address	Years	Walkscore
North Ave, Oak Park, IL	1967-1969	63
Wilcox St, Downers Grove, IL	1969-1971	51
Brainard St, Naperville, IL	1971-1975	78
Green Valley Circle, Culver City, CA	1975	80
Burr Oak Ln, Lisle, IL	1975-1976	58
Carpenter St, Downers Grove, IL	1976-1985	38
Randolph St, Meadville, PA	1985-1989	82
Wightman St, Pittsburgh, PA	1989-1991	74
Greenhill Dr, Fishkill, NY	1991-1992	23
Theresa Blvd, Wappingers Falls, NY	1992-1994	0!
Hudson Harbor Dr, Poughkeepsie, NY	1994-1995	55
Smokerise Ln, Wappingers Falls, NY	1995-1997	NA
Battery Place, New York, NY	1997-2000	97
Bridge St, Sydney, NSW, Australia	2000	NA
Hicks St, Brooklyn Heights, NY, NY	2001-2007	95
Main St, Brooklyn, NY	2007-	95

Glitches

I assume all of these glitches have more to do with the Google Maps API than the "patent-pending" Walkscore algorithm:

• I tried various iterations of the address on Smokerise Lane but Walkscore (really the Google Maps API) couldn't geocode it. It wasn't exactly new when I lived there ten years ago, I don't know enough about the API to guess where it's breaking.
• It totally blew my Sydney address on two levels: it placed it in North Sydney (which is a separate city, I think), and because Google do not have local data for Sydney (again: guessing) it rated it a 0 out of 100. If there's no applicable data at all something (Google Maps API? Walkscore?) should flag that as the condition and not just hand out a 0. Not that anyone who'd solely judge where to live based on Walkscore and thus rule out the Sydney CBD deserves to live in Sydney in the first place. I'm guessing that Google only has local data for the US.
• For our current place on Main Street in DUMBO, it includes services across the river in Manhattan. Again, knowing nothing about the Google Maps API but feeling the need to opine nonetheless, something, somewhere should be able to clue in and say Yes, these things are within a mile radius of the starting point, however there is a (bridge|river|landfill|mountain) in between. This is not a new problem, plotting out the closest Staples Store to Amagansett, NY returns two locations in Connecticut which are technically closer than the third choice in Riverhead, NY, but require either swimming or flying to reach.

Still, a very cool mashup demonstrating the power of open APIs and open data for that matter.

Via: echo.