Sammy over at Percipience alerted me to a neat website called Walk Score that provides you with a score determining how walkable your neighborhood, city, or town is. Just plug in your address, zip code, or town/city name and get a score from 0 to 100. The higher the number, the better.
It’s no wonder that I had trouble in our first apartment in Indiana last year, since I moved from an urban neighborhood in a city with walking scores of 83 and 98, respectively, to one of 26. TWENTY-SIX out of a possible ONE HUNDRED. That kind of change would make anyone depressed, no?
I propose the state of Indiana either build more sidewalks and design more sustainable neighborhoods or suck it up and pay for my therapy sessions.
The town we now live in has a score of 62–obviously substantially lower than our scores in Boston, but much better than our original IN location. We make it a point to walk whenever we can, even though it requires us to dash across some busy roads that don’t have cross walks for miles.
Last night Sweet Cheeks had a Mets game on TV (he doesn’t even know who to root for anymore) and I actually found myself fondly reminiscing life in our Boston neighborhood during baseball season. SMACK! That’s the sound of anyone whose commute home from work is or ever has been impacted by increased Red Sox traffic on the Green line hitting me upside the head for such a thought.
Our preferred train home from downtown was one of two trains that dumps into the Fenway station, which on home game nights bloats like a boa constrictor trying to swallow an elephant. I had a season game schedule up in my cube at work and on game nights Sweet Cheeks and I would do one of the following:
a) Stay late at the office.
b) Stay late at the office and then go out for drinks.
c) a + b + have dinner downtown.
d) Choose to walk home the 4 miles.
e) Take another train and walk 20 additional minutes out of the way to get to the apartment.
Now? Commuting is a boring car ride with almost no variation whatsover but for the choice of music: Mary Poppins or The Jungle Book. (KILL US NOW.)
Also, I have almost no sense at all that it even is baseball season. Indiana has a minor league team and we went to one of the first games of the season, but there’s no buzz about baseball. It’s like it doesn’t exist. And you know what? After living in Boston for eight years, that’s very weird. We’re not in Kansas anymore, little Pitter. And while there are bound to be an increasing number of munchkins in our lives by fall, I swear to you none of this life is in glorious technicolor.
6 Comments
June 2, 2008 at 2:08 pm
One of my major beefs with Indy is it’s lack of public transport. BUT I suspect since winning the Super Bowl ‘12 bid, that will change.
June 2, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Hey, got a 49 over in the Irvington area. I think it’d be nice to get a “bike score” which would open up a few more things. Cool idea.
We actually do walk to the nice park down the block from us with our dogs. I never thought of us as park-goers but I guess we are!
June 2, 2008 at 3:26 pm
As a former C line commuter, you know I am willing to be the SMACKer in this story:-)
June 3, 2008 at 9:06 am
Thanks, Em. ;P
June 3, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Our place on Beacon Hill had a score of 100. Our current place: 25. Ick!
June 3, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Indiana’s sport is basketball, and the more local, the more they like it. High school teams get better support than the Pacers.