The above map shows the 100 metro areas with the highest fraction of people who primarily walk to work (or at least make that claim to surveyors) This comes from Governing's By The Numbers blog. That big circle in upstate NY is Ithaca, where I live, and where just over 15% of people say they walk to work. Ithaca is a pretty compact walkable place, so I can well believe this nine months out of the year. Color me a bit skeptical as to how many are walking in January, however.
The top sections of the list are dominated by small college towns.
Funny (to me) that you should post this today. I'm in Seattle, and walked to work this morning for the first time in over a year. It's four miles, and takes a little over an hour. After yesterday's 45-minute bus commute I realized that if I were willing to take an extra 15 minutes to get to work I could get a whole hour of outdoor exercise, a bargain in my book.
ReplyDeleteIf traffic continues to be as bad as it is now who knows? I might even be walking in January. Fortunately our winters aren't as tough as upstate New York.
Census has improved their surveys. They used to ignore group housing (like dorms) for purposes of transportation. They claim for their current survey that they include group housing now.
ReplyDeleteThat makes a difference because adult students should be counted, and their trips weren't in the past.
Glad to see my hometown was #3 in the survey; will be talking to city council about this soon. Thanks for the info!
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