It’s not shocking, as it’s one of the main complaints we hear about Charlotte. Public transit and walkability. And I get it. But I also understand that Charlotte wasn’t designed that way and will most likely always be a city meant to be driven. It’s simply too spread out as our other cities in our state. But when I realized that pretty much every major city in North Carolina was ranked as “least walkable” well then it must be worse than I thought.
The rankings come from Walkscore.com and take into account 130 cities in the US. Each city was given a “walk score” based on the following methodology:
To rank cities and neighborhoods, we calculate the Walk Score of approximately every city block (technically a grid of latitude and longitude points spaced roughly 500 feet apart).
Each point is weighted by population density so that the rankings reflect where people live and so that neighborhoods and cities do not have lower scores because of parks, bodies of water, etc.
For our Walk Score ranking, we define “large cities” as the 50 largest U.S. cities. For our Transit Score and Bike Score ranking, we define “large cities” as cities with more than 300,000 people.
Below you will find the bottom 15 cities which includes 6 from North Carolina. Listed for each city is their walk score and for reference the bike and transit score as well. The average walk score for cities in 48. Not one of the North Carolina cities listed reaches that threshold.
Here is what Walkscore.com considers the walkability tiers:
| 90–100 | Walker’s Paradise Daily errands do not require a car. |
| 70–89 | Very Walkable Most errands can be accomplished on foot. |
| 50–69 | Somewhat Walkable Some errands can be accomplished on foot. |
| 25–49 | Car-Dependent Most errands require a car. |
| 0–24 | Car-Dependent Almost all errands require a car. |
What do you think could be done to make Charlotte and other places in North Carolina more walkable? Or do you feel more like I do that it’s probably a lost cause outside of certain neighborhoods? View the full study here or keep reading to see which North Carlina cities are the worst and just how bad they truly are.
