Walk Score Ranks the Bikeability of Every Address in 36 Cities

Walk Score came out with its bikeability rankings in the spring, but they were only at the citywide level. If you wanted to plug in your address and come up with a custom rating for your own address, like you can with Walk Score, the system wasn’t quite ready. That all changes today. Using an algorithm that takes into account factors including bike infrastructure, topography, and the number of cyclists on the streets, Walk Score has released “Bike Scores” for addresses in 25 American cities and 11 Canadian cities.

It looks like there's a hunger for bicycling in Cincinnati despite the lack of high-quality bike lanes. Photo: ##http://old.urbancincy.com/2010/05/cincinnati-aims-to-double-number-of.html##Urban Cincy##

To select which cities would get address-specific Bike Score capability first, Walk Score asked people to vote, and the cities where people were clamoring for information turn out not to be the top cycling cities in the country. Cincinnati topped the voting and its citywide Bike Score is a relatively meager 37. A lot of the top vote-getting cities are places with low overall Bike Scores — maybe this data release will help advocates there press for better bike infrastructure.

Walk Score’s first 25 bike-scored U.S. cities include the top 10 vote-getters, the top 10 most bikeable cities they had scored this spring, and five others selected for mysterious reasons.

The full list is:

  • Cincinnati = Bike Score 37
  • Austin = Bike Score 45
  • Pittsburgh = Bike Score 39
  • Philadelphia = Bike Score 68
  • Miami = Bike Score 57
  • Oakland = Bike Score 57
  • Houston = Bike Score 49
  • Los Angeles = Bike Score 54
  • Eugene = Bike Score 75
  • San Diego = Bike Score 48
  • Ann Arbor =Bike Score 76
  • Boulder = Bike Score 86
  • Fort Collins = Bike Score 78
  • Tempe = Bike Score 75
  • Tyler = Bike Score 38

  • Minneapolis = Bike Score 79
  • Portland = Bike Score 70
  • San Francisco = Bike Score 70
  • Boston = Bike Score 68
  • Madison = Bike Score 67
  • Washington, DC = Bike Score 65
  • Seattle = Bike Score 64
  • Tucson = Bike Score 64
  • New York = Bike Score 62
  • Chicago = Bike Score 62

Walk Score also scored some major landmarks “for fun,” giving the US Capitol a Bike Score of 89, Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell a Bike Score of 96, and UCLA a Bike Score of 55.

They also mapped bike-share locations in every city that has a system, whether or not it’s one of the 25 fully scored cities.

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