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.
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.
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.
Tanya became Streetsblog's Capitol Hill editor in September 2010 after covering Congress for Pacifica Radios Washington bureau and for public radio stations around the country. She lives car-free in a transit-oriented and bike-friendly neighborhood of Washington, DC.
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