Seattle-based "civic software" developer Front Seat has launched City-Go-Round, a Web site that helps visitors find public transit applications for their smartphone or computer.
Front Seat’s own application, Walk Score — available as an iPhone app or Web-based tool that assigns "walkability" scores for homes and neighborhoods based on the availability of nearby amenities (see story) — is one of 64 transit apps featured on City-Go-Round.
Walk Score was recently updated to provide public transit data from more than 80 transit agencies. When users look up an address on Walk Score, it displays nearby bus and train stops — if a city provides open transit data.
Walk Score and other transit apps featured on City-Go-Round draw on open data from 89 transit agencies in the U.S., Canada and Australia.
In an attempt to get more transit agencies to provide open data in the Google Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format, City-Go-Round also lists 669 transit agencies it says have not made their data available.
A $200,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation helped Front Seat create City-Go-Round and develop Walk Score’s new public transit capabilities.
Front Seat offers an application programming interface (API) that automatically generates walkability scores for listings published by real estate sites including ZipRealty.com, Windermere Real Estate, Zillow.com, and Cyberhomes.
A recent study commissioned by CEOs for Cities, a group that promotes sustainable cities, found a positive correlation between home values and walkability in all but two of 15 markets studied: Las Vegas and Bakersfield, Calif.
The study found that each one point increase in a property’s Walk Score was associated with an increase in value of $500 to $3,000, depending on the market. Walk Score generates a score from zero to 100, with a score of 70 or above indicating a neighborhood where it’s possible to get by without a car (see story).
***
What’s your opinion? Leave your comments below or send a letter to the editor.
