How Walkable is Your School?

Last week—and just in time for the start of the football season—the benevolent geniuses at Walk Score published walkability rankings for every NFL stadium in the US.  If you’re keeping score, Seattle’s Qwest Field, the Northwest’s only NFL stadium, ranked fifth in walkability among the NFL.  But if Canadian Football League stadiums had been included, the BC Lions permanent home would have tied for 2nd, behind only St. Louis.)

But last week also marked the start of school for many Northwestern kids.  And that inspired us to try handing out Walk Score grades for Portland and Seattle schools.

The test results?  Well, many schools in both cities did quite well—which is little surprise, since both cities landed on Walk Score’s list of the top 10 most walkable cities in the nation.  Yeah, yeah, but which city had the higher walkability GPA?  Sorry, Portland:  Seattle schools just edged out Portland’s for the valedictory spot, with an average Walk Score of 71 to Portland’s 69.

Check below the jump to find our how your kids’ school did:

Just to be perfectly clear:  these rankings aren’t an ideal measure of walkability for school kids. Walk Score measures the proximity and diversity of businesses, parks, and other amenities around the schools.  Anecdotally, a high Walk Score often signals the presence of good pedestrian amenities like sidewalks and well-marked crosswalks.  Nonetheless, Walk Score isn’t a reliable measure for the safety of school-age kids.  This is more for fun than for anything else. As my high-school Latin teacher might have said, if I’d had one: caveat ambulator.

We used addresses from the Seattle Times school finder and the Portland Public Schools website.  Schools open, close, and move around sometimes, so there might be a few inaccuracies in the list.  Sorry, teach!

School books picture courtesy of MorgueFile