Walk the talk

The website Walk Score, which assigns neighborhoods and cities a rating based on the ease of walking, recently added Bike Score in recognition of last week’s Bike to Work Week.

The rating is given based on criteria such as bike lanes, road connectivity, hills and “bicycle mode share”—biking as a social activity. The website states, “Looking only at [the other] components doesn’t account for the number of bikers in a city like Portland, Ore., vs. other cities with similar infrastructure scores. Biking is social. Many biking experts argue that there is a strong social component to biking. The ‘safety in numbers’ research indicates that more bikers on the road makes drivers more aware of bikers—and more drivers have had the experience of biking.” At the moment, only a handful of cities have bike scores, but more plan to be rated in the near future.

According to the website, the streets around the Reno News & Review office have a Walk Score of 83 out of 100, but the city as a whole scored just 49 out of 100, which means it’s “car-dependent.” Reno also received a 27 out of 100 for its public transportation services. Check out the scores for more of Reno’s neighborhoods at www.walkscore.com.