Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

IG of the Day: Walking Communities

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Governing magazine has just published an interactive map showing which United States metros have the highest percentage of workers who walk to work. No surprise, the leaders in Virginia are small metros with large student populations — Charlottesville, Blacksburg and Harrisonburg.

The graphics are somewhat deceptive, however. The size of the dot appears to bear some correlation to the percentage of population that walks to work, but it’s an imperfect one. (Hampton Road’s dot is so small it barely registers on the map, yet the percentage of population walking to work is nearly double that of Richmond.) So, to make sure you get an accurate picture, here’s the key data extracted from the interactive features of the map:

6.1% — Charlottesville
5.1% — Blacksburg/Christiansburg
4.7% — Harrisonburg
3.2% — Washington
3.2% — Lynchburg
2.7% — Winchester
2.5% — Virginia Beach/Norfolk
1.8% — Roanoke
1.4% — Richmond
1.1% — Danville
1.0% — Bristol/Kingsport

— JAB

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  1. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    I am stunned that Richmond is less than 1/2 of Washington.

    However, the bigger surprise is Winchester. I’ve only been to Winchester once or twice but I don’t recall anything unique that would make it such a walkable community. However, there must be something. And Winchester is small enough that it’s strength (vs Danville, for example) ought to be understandable.

    The sad thing is that almost every community could be more “walkable”. Many cities interconnect buildings through underground walkways (Toronto, for example) or elevated walkways (Minneapolis, for example). Tyson’s Corner has more than enough daytime density to justify the expense of more pedestrian walkways. With the advent of Metro and the hoped for multi-use settlement patterns – walkways need to be considered. I believe they are part of the plan although they don’t seem to be a featured part of the plan. It would be interesting to measure Tyson’s “walkability” before and after the rebuilding.

  2. reed fawell Avatar
    reed fawell

    Delightful Winchester is kind of like Georgetown DC in terms of walk-ability. And has far less urban versus suburban ratio than say Richmond, I suspect.

  3. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    All it would take in Great Falls for the “walkability index” to rise would be the building of sidewalks. Might as well build bike lanes at the same time. God knows that barely a day goes by when I don’t have a nerve wracking experience between my F-150 and some fearless Looney-Tunes on a ten speed wearing some 7-11 logo adorned biking costume.

    So, why aren’t the sidewalks and bike lanes built? There is plenty of land beside the roads, the houses are set well back?

    I guess people don’t really care about walkability / bikability. And … building the sidewalks and bike lanes would require some pretty substantial tree removal as far as I can see.

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