The developers of "Walk Score" — an online tool for measuring how easy it is to get around a particular neighborhood on foot — are offering new tools that make it easier for house hunters to analyze public transit options from a given address and estimate their monthly transportation costs.
Transit Score, available in more than 30 cities, assigns a rating of 1 to 100 depending on how well an address is served by public transits.
In addition, Walk Score users can now call up "commute reports" that show how long it would take them to get to work, school or other location by car, bike or on foot, listing nearby public transit stops and routes.
Like the Walk Score tool, Transit Score is available as an application programming interface (API) that allows real estate websites to display Transit Scores and nearby public transit stops alongside listings.
Real estate sites employing the Walk Score API include ZipRealty.com, Windermere Real Estate, Zillow.com, and Cyberhomes. In a press release, ZipRealty said it was committed to introducing the Transit Score API.
Walk Score is also offering a home and transportation costs calculator, which integrates the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s "Housing + Transportation Affordability Index" into Walk Score to generate location-based reports that estimate monthly housing and transportation costs.
Walk Score’s developer, Seattle-based "civic software" company Front Seat, has been using a $200,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to further develop Walk Score’s public transit capabilities.
In December, Front Seat announced the launch of City-Go-Round, a website aimed at helping users find public transit applications for their smart phone or computer.
