What parts of the Metro have the best Walk Score?

Transit

What parts of the Metro have the best Walk Score?

by Matt Johnson • March 8, 2012 1:26 pm

Last week, I found that the Walk Score for Washington's Metro station areas to the was lower than most other heavy rail systems in the United States. But what if we just look at stations in DC, or Arlington? How walkable are the Montgomery, or Prince George's, or Fairfax stations on their own?

The regional average of Metro's 86 stations is 72.1. As one would expect, the District of Columbia is the top-scoring jurisdiction, with an average of 81.6. The remainder of the "diamond," Arlington and Alexandria, is a clear second place. Montgomery is in the middle, with Fairfax and Prince George's trailing well behind.

A few Metro stations are right on the borders of jurisdictions: Friendship Heights between DC and Montgomery, and Capitol Heights and Southern Avenue between DC and Prince George's. This analysis counts each toward the score of both jurisdictions.

Nationally, the District and Arlington/Alexandria score favorably. The DC Metro stations by themselves fall just behind Chicago and Boston.

Unfortunately, Fairfax and Prince George's fall to the bottom of the pile. Fairfax's low score is somewhat understandable since it has only 5 stations, most of which serve mainly as park and rides.

But Prince George's has 15 stations, more than any other jurisdiction aside from the District. The county is at a disadvantage because of the placement of many stations. But even so, Prince George's has not committed to transit-oriented development around its stations. It also has a history of allowing development on the fringes of the county to short-circuit demand for offices and retail near Metro.

Fairfax, on the other hand, is working to reinvent Tysons Corner as a walkable urban place around 4 new Metro stops. Interestingly, adding the 5 stops on the Silver Line already under construction would raise Fairfax's average to 61.8.

While Walk Score is not a perfect measure of walkability, the fact that Tysons already has some pretty good scores bodes well for efforts to transform the employment center into a bona fide urban center.

16 comments

Tags: Alexandria, Arlington, DC, Fairfax, Maryland, Metro, Montgomery, Prince George's, transit, Virginia, Walk Score, walkability, WMATA

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Matt Johnson has lived in the Washington region since mid-2007. He has a Master's degree in Community Planning from the University of Maryland and a BS in Public Policy from Georgia Tech. He has worked in the planning field since 2006 and lives in Greenbelt, where he serves on the city's Advisory Planning Board.

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awesome! I'd love to see a breakdown by metro line. We know which would be worst, but which is best?

by Tom A. on Mar 8, 2012 1:43 pm • link • report

Hi Matt,

Great post. I did that original post on DC Metro WalkScores (http://davidklion.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/dc-metro-stations-ranked/) and came up with slightly different averages, despite using what I'd guess is the same methodology.

For DC, I got 79 instead of 86. For Montgomery, I got almost exactly the same result, but for Prince George's, I got 43 rather than 49.8. For Northern Virginia, I didn't break it down by county, but my average for all Virginia stations was 69.

There's a full list of scores for every station on my post. Do you see any discrepancies? Is it possible we entered different addresses in some cases? My method was to type the name of the station, followed by "metro station", followed by the city/state.

-David

by David Klion on Mar 8, 2012 1:52 pm • link • report

Granted I don't have the knowledge or data to necessarily prove this, but I would argue that PG has at least put forth an attempt on paper to make transit oriented development around some of its metro stations a reality. Check out the site development for the West Hyattsville metro station for example: http://www.hyattsville.org/index.aspx?NID=457

However due to underlying economic and social issues and perceptions of the county as a whole, TOD at stations like West Hyattsville, PG Plaza, and Greenbelt (among others) has either not been started, or only partially built.

Unfinished mixed use centers such as University Town Center (UTC) at PG Plaza sets a bad precedent when trying to develop other TOD in the county. Developers and the community look at the UTC for example as a "failed" development since it was never built to plan, and remains full of vacancies. Granted there are plans via the Belcrest Plaza to add thousands of residential units, including a 300+ foot office tower.

However, until this is built out and generating revenue + sustainable population growth, how can a developer look at a Metro station like Southern Ave. and decide it's worth investing billions of $ to improve its walk score?

by Scott M. on Mar 8, 2012 2:09 pm • link • report

@David Klion:
I manually placed the Walk Score icon on the station marker. I did not use the find an address function.

by Matt Johnson on Mar 8, 2012 2:23 pm • link • report

It's interesting to see how Metro in DC proper compares to toher metro transit systems, and thanks for making the effort to do the calculations, but I'm not sure what it really means. Boston's and Chicago's transit systems also go out to the burbs. And I'm guessing if you were to pare off those far-flung stations (like, say, Alewife on MBTA's Red Line), it would likewise improve those systems' collective walk scores. That just shows that the core tends to have more walkability than the periphery (although not always, of course). But the DC-portion-of-Metro vs. all-of-the-T or all-of-the-L is apples to oranges.

by Paula Product on Mar 8, 2012 3:00 pm • link • report

Okay, that makes sense. That could have some marginal impact on scores, especially since some stations have multiple entrances, and since the station marker often isn't located precisely at any of them. I wouldn't think it would make such huge differences, but it might.

by David Klion on Mar 8, 2012 3:01 pm • link • report

Hey, PG! Represent!

Of course, DC United would already have a stadium built and a neighborhood with lots of commerce going up around it at Morgan Blvd., if the Council hadn't stupidly rejected it in their "Soccer? We don't want soccer in our county!" vote. PG might even have leapfrogged over Fairfax out of last place.

by Fischy (Ed F.) on Mar 8, 2012 3:08 pm • link • report

Is there a reason you aggregated Arlington and Alexandria?

And are the Cemetery and DCA included in those numbers?

by charlie on Mar 8, 2012 3:25 pm • link • report

in his book, The Option of Urbanism, Chris Leinberger rated DC the best walk score. Adding that to the fact that DC has a lot of Metro stations, I would have thought DC ranks number one.

by Jaybird926@aol.com on Mar 8, 2012 7:14 pm • link • report

Nice article! Prince George's County has had plenty of opportunities to increase its walk score. The DC United stadium at Morgan Blvd. as Fischy mentioned, the failed development at Greenbelt (they cleared and graded acre upon acre of land too), and the failure to get HHS to move to the county.

Still, the county is trying to make an effort at reining in development from the county's extremities, although it already is practically border to border suburbs apart from the Southeastern tip (unlike Montgomery whose "Agricultural Preserve" takes up a large portion of upcounty). The PG Plaza/Hyattsville/University Town Center development was a moderate success as is Largo Town Center (if they could reign in the crime and loitering). They're also trying to jumpstart TOD on the Southern end of the Green Line.

In my opinion the urban hub at New Carrollton, which is partially under construction thanks to O'Malley moving the MD Dept. of Housing there, is the most ambitious and most critical TOD project in the entire DC region and state of Maryland. The scale of the project is enormous and there is no other location in the entire area that has as many transportation options at one spot:

-Amtrak Northeast Corridor (intercity high-speed rail)
-MARC Penn Line (commuter rail)
-Metro Orange Line (heavy rail)
-MTA Purple Line (future light rail)
-I-95/I-495 Beltway
-Rt.50/I-595 to DC, Annapolis, and OC
-Baltimore-Washington Parkway
-30min from BWI Airport

The project is just way too valuable for Prince George's to screw it up.

see: http://www.pgplanning.org/Resources/Publications/New_Carrollton_TDDP.htm

by King Terrapin on Mar 8, 2012 11:14 pm • link • report

Matt, would've liked to see the breakdown by station.

by Froggie on Mar 9, 2012 3:18 am • link • report

I'm surprised there's nothing ever really mentioned about the development going on at Vienna right now. Seems like the walk score is going to be going up once this project is completed, but it's hard to find any recent news on what's going on. Would be helpful for GGW to cover it.

by S on Mar 9, 2012 9:04 am • link • report

S: Would you like to write about it? The way Greater Greater Washington works is we have large number of volunteer contributors who write about things they know and/or find interesting. I can't assign anyone to go cover something like a newspaper because we're not paying anyone (we have no ads and no budget, except the hosting costs I pay).

Unfortunately, we don't have as many Fairfax County contributors as from some other jurisdictions, but I'd love to have some discussion of the Vienna projects. I'll ask around, but if you want to write something or know some good people in the area, please ask them to email info@ggwash.org. Thanks!

by David Alpert on Mar 9, 2012 9:27 am • link • report

King Terrapin: I figure by "the area" you meant PG County, because Union Station is similarly situated. I used to make a comparable point about the H Street neighborhood being proximate to the best collection of transportation assets in the region as of 2001, "wondering" why it wasn't seen as a desirable neighborhood.

-Amtrak Northeast Corridor (intercity high-speed rail)
-MARC Penn Line, Camden Line, Brunswick Line (commuter rail)
-Virginia Railway Express
-Intercity bus service (Bolt etc.)
-Metro Red Line (heavy rail)
-I-395 to Virginia/SE-SW Freeway
-Rt.50 to Annapolis
-Baltimore-Washington Parkway
-less than 15 min from National Airport

Won't have light rail access, but it will be proximate to streetcar access.

BUT, in line with BeyondDC's point last year about how another major train station needs to be developed between Union Station and Arlington to take up some of the slack from the commuter railroads (He didn't mention as an example of how the three railroad stations are set up in Philadelphia, once unconnected because they were stations for different railroad companies, they are now connected in terms of the Septa Regional Railroad system), you make a good argument for New Carrollton developing a transit center/railroad station comparable in image and heft to Union Station, the forthcoming Sarbanes Transit Center in Silver Spring, the post-modern Amtrak station for Albany (located in Rensselaer), etc.

- http://www.amtrak40th.com/exhibit-train/stops/albany-rensselaer-ny

Developing a signature "train station" (transit center) there would be a transformative step for Prince George's County.

by Richard Layman on Mar 9, 2012 4:46 pm • link • report

@Richard
Very true. Yeah, I was supposed to add "except Union Station." I'm really glad to see the rapidly growing cluster of development in NoMa which is taking full advantage of the transit superhub that is Union Station/NY Ave Metro.

by King Terrapin on Mar 10, 2012 7:53 pm • link • report

"The project is just way too valuable for Prince George's to screw it up."

Well, I'm sure they'll give it their best shot.

by Kolohe on Mar 10, 2012 11:25 pm • link • report