The Portland Index: Walk This Way

With TriMet's computer system for tracking arrival times knocked out by a car wreck this week, parking-free apartments piling up on the east side, and the price of gas hovering near $4, it's important to know you can get where you need to go on foot. How does Portland rank among major U.S. cities for walking? The website Walkscore.com annually calculates how close a city's homes are to frequent destinations—schools, grocery stores, parks, restaurants and banks—then aggregates those numbers to give each city a walkability rating of 1 to 100. Portland may need more sidewalks, but its urban density puts it in the nation's top quadrant, squeezed between Minneapolis and Los Angeles (!). But we're nowhere near New York—that town was made for walkin'.

WWeek 2015