08-10-2015, 11:26 AM
(08-10-2015, 11:17 AM)ookpik Wrote: Interesting. I live about the same distance from Uptown Waterloo and the Square. I almost(*) always walk there and back. I've never used GRT for that purpose.
Most people can walk a kilometer in under 15 minutes. It would normally take them as long or longer to get to/from bus stops and then wait for the next bus, etc. than to walk the whole distance.
See https://www.walkscore.com/. FWIW I get a Walk Score of 81 and Transit Score of 56.
(*) exceptions are when it's raining heavily or I have a lot of stuff to carry.
I take Walk Scores with a grain of salt. All it deals with are distances. I once lived somewhere with a walk score of 95, but a lot of those walks were unpleasant and often dangerous. Nearly anywhere I can think of within 800 meters of Waterloo Town Square should get better than 80%, in my opinion: generally the walking is very good.
A search of a Longwood Drive address on walk score gives it 55, with quite a few amenities within 1 kilometre or two. I think the average speed is usually listed at five kilometres per hour, so that's fifteen or twenty minutes. It's going to be extremely variable whether people find that "close enough" to walk, but what that 55 can't tell us if those short walks are in unpleasant areas or on streets that put the walker in harm's way.