17 Responses to just bought a house …

  1. EngineerScotty June 26, 2012 at 10:55 am #

    Congratulations!

  2. Aleks Bromfield June 26, 2012 at 11:08 am #

    Congrats!
    Inquiring minds want to know: why did you choose a location with such a low Walk Score (by either measure)? Not to suggest that Walk Score is a perfect measure of anything, but even so, I’m curious why you didn’t pick a more urban neighborhood.
    It’s a personal question, so no need to answer… but you did bring it up 😉

  3. Jarrett at HumanTransit.org June 26, 2012 at 11:11 am #

    Aleks.  I'm a fierce gardener, mostly, and needed some space for that.  Also I find the neighborhood so bikeable that the walk score doesn't matter that much to me.  J

  4. Michael D. Setty June 26, 2012 at 11:14 am #

    So how frequent is the local bus? Are you within walking distance of a frequent service line?

  5. Aleks Bromfield June 26, 2012 at 11:18 am #

    Wow, quick response! 🙂 That makes perfect sense.
    I’d love to learn more about the psychology (if you could call it that) of biking. I’m a fit and healthy young adult, I own a bike, and I could easily use it for most journeys. But instead, I walk. Partly it’s Seattle’s hills, but mostly, I think that dealing with any vehicle — even one as small and compact as a bike — feels like a burden. The modes I use to get around — walking, transit, taxis when necessary — are all very “one-way” friendly.
    I have a sense that there are other people who feel similarly, and that it may be part of why biking doesn’t have a bigger mode share.

  6. Joseph E June 26, 2012 at 1:06 pm #

    Do you want to move by bike? It could be arranged. 😉

  7. Danny Howard June 26, 2012 at 2:28 pm #

    We’re closing on a pad in Sunnyvale, CA. Walk score 68, street smart 73.
    Transit score: 43, but less than a mile’s walk to Caltrain. 🙂
    This seems to be the season for a lot of my friends to buy in to the market.

  8. Alai June 26, 2012 at 6:46 pm #

    Re biking:
    I think there’s a fair amount of “startup costs” when it comes to biking, especially for errands and commuting, both in terms of time and money. Lots of people have some old bike that they figure will work, and it’s easy to get frustrated and give up when it doesn’t. It takes a while to get comfortable. At some point you’ll probably spill your groceries.
    I think it’s getting a little easier now with the increasing popularity of utility bikes which come with decent kickstands and racks and so on, right off the shelf. My own bike is a bit slapdash, which I wouldn’t recommend, especially to a novice–but I think that’s how a lot of people start out.

  9. Miles Bader June 26, 2012 at 10:53 pm #

    Hm, I wish these walk-score calculators worked on non-U.S. locations… (for my house, it fails pretty much completely)
    [And given the way it screws up, I imagine the results are rather dubious in many U.S. locations too, without manual correction.]

  10. Alon Levy June 27, 2012 at 2:59 am #

    Miles: I forget, where do you live? I vaguely remember Kawasaki, but it may be totally wrong.
    Jarrett: congratulations on the house.

  11. Miles Bader June 27, 2012 at 7:54 am #

    @Alon
    Nearish Musashi-kosugi station (Kawasaki, Nakahara-ku)

  12. Jarrett at HumanTransit.org June 27, 2012 at 2:00 pm #

    Alai.  Note that in the Netherlands, the very cheap 'not worth stealing' bike constitutes the vast majority of bikes on the road.  It has one gear and no brakes (pedal backward to stop) but works fine for short-distance access to transit or the local shops.  Jarrett

  13. Jarrett at HumanTransit.org June 27, 2012 at 2:04 pm #

    Aleks.  You've just explained a key reason why bikes will never replace public transit in dense cities where public transit can run efficiently.  In new suburbs, on the other hand, cycle facilities could do a lot to reduce the need for very-low-ridership local services.  J

  14. francis June 27, 2012 at 2:19 pm #

    @Miles – I think only in the US is walkscore even an issue… everywhere else most people live in places where it’s high enough.

  15. Jarrett at HumanTransit.org June 28, 2012 at 1:09 pm #

    Michael Setty.  I'm at a grid intersection with a couple of near-frequent options, though nothing can be counted on given Tri-Met's budget situation. 

  16. JayinPhiladelphia June 30, 2012 at 2:30 am #

    Congrats, Jarrett. My old SE Portland location (Creston-Kenilworth) had 82 and 71 scores, smart and ‘not-smart,’ which I thought was kind of inflated. At the same time, I also felt the transit score was underrated, as the 75 was almost right out my front door and the 9 and 17 were just a few blocks away in either direction.
    91 Walkscore (smart) at my new place in Philadelphia (Kensington), and I do find it more pleasant to walk around here (at least when it isn’t roughly 134 degrees for weeks at a time, as it has been lately) as the street walls formed by the rowhomes make the blocks seem much shorter (and shadier, on the right side of the block), but biking is still probably twenty or more years behind Portland, and though the El / subways and trolleys are great, SEPTA’s buses, at least in this part of the city, are hit or miss more often than not. So those are the tradeoffs, I guess.

  17. Kathy July 25, 2012 at 9:00 pm #

    “fierce gardener” I like that! What a great place to garden with your looooong growing season and frequent rains. Congrats on the house and garden.