Walk This Way – Metrorail’s Walkshed Atlas 1.0

March 30th, 2015

Station-area walkability is one of the most potent congestion-busting tools in the planner’s bag of tricks. Now we’ve mapped out in detail which stations are living up to their full potential – and where we need to redouble our efforts.

We’ve brought to you information about the power of station area walkability. Not only does better station access give mobility benefits to those who most need it, but it also boosts ridership and revenue and therefore lowers Metrorail’s operating subsidy. That means lower taxes for you and me.

Metro’s Office of Planning is wiring the science of walkability into WMATA’s Key Performance Indicators. We are committed to working with our partner jurisdictions to improving station area access and identifying the near-term and low-cost improvements that have big returns for ridership and revenue. And we have been working diligently to develop a comprehensive geodatabase of walk sheds and the land uses – existing, planned, and proposed – located within them.

Example walk shed, extracted from the Walk Shed Atlas.

We’re also happy to release for the first time a comprehensive atlas of Metrorail walk sheds that includes some of the data that the Office of Planning uses to calculate ridership potential and evaluate investment needs. You’ll notice that each station area has a unique “footprint” and that in almost every case, the walkshed footprint is related to the overall performance of the station (as defined by all-day boardings).

A few notes here:

  • These station area walk sheds include both formal walking routes and informal walking paths to the extent that we were able to discern them from either user experience or crowd-sourced data sources such as OpenStreetMap. If you believe that there is somehow a connection which extends or contracts a walk shed, please let us know by emailing your observation to planning@wmata.com and if you so desire you can also post your input here.
  • We will be working with all of our partner jurisdictions to continually update these walk sheds on an annual or semi-annual basis.
  • There are hundreds of data variables that we can pull for the walk sheds. Demographic information on population, households, incomes, etc. as well as economic information such as job counts, store types, spending power are all available.

We’d also love to know what you notice about the walk sheds! What patterns, trends, or findings do you see?

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  1. Andrew
    March 30th, 2015 at 12:07 | #1

    I think it would be helpful to get a .csv file with all of the numbers in the atlas so (others) could look at it.

    I also think it would be interesting to see a map of inner DC with all of the walk sheds turned on, perhaps with darker shading for areas in multiple walk sheds or colored shading for access to different lines. Similarly for Rosslyn-Ballston, Alexandria, and Tysons. Instead of station->area, being able to look at it as area->station.

    For example, the Verizon Center is about 0.5 miles away from Federal Triangle, but way outside its walk shed. However, it’s in the walk shed of 5 other stations.

  2. Esther
    March 30th, 2015 at 12:50 | #2

    Echoing Andrew’s comments above. And if resources allow – the ability to overlay this with a crime map. Walkability, while great, goes out the door if you live in a higher crime neighborhood.

  3. March 30th, 2015 at 15:18 | #3

    Great to know that the paths can be updated via OSM — I noticed that new walkways open up large areas around Rhode Island Avenue and Grosvenor, which currently have some of the smaller walk sheds.

    Others have noted that the jobs numbers seem particularly low for some locations, like (ironically) the Census building at Suitland. Do the jobs numbers come from LEHD? Are they reliable down to this fine a grain of analysis?

  4. March 30th, 2015 at 17:17 | #4

    Hi Everyone! Thanks for the ideas and feedback here. We’re really trying to get this right and we also know that this will take time – as well as input from the broader community. So thanks in advance!

    @Andrew/@Esther – Seems like what you are looking for is the shapefile with the walksheds. That way you could turn them on/off and play with them and load the stats that you want to load? I don’t know if I have the filespace to do that but keep your eyes peeled and I’ll see if I can load it up.

    @Payton – RI Ave walkshed can/should expand as a result of the completion of the new bike/ped bridge connection to MetBranch. And Grovesnor/Strathmore has some of the more curious walkable conditions in the system (for those on the west side of 355, the station can feel like a private entry into a gated community).

  5. Justin
    March 31st, 2015 at 09:45 | #5

    @Payton Chung To your question about jobs data – we are showing numbers based on ESRI’s 2014 Business Listings. That data source is imperfect, and in particular does seem to be missing some (but not all) federal jobs, but we feel it’s better than LODES/LEHD for this fine-grain level. So, we’ve settled on ESRI for now, and manually adjusted some stations where we know about big misses. Suitland probably needs adjustment too, you’re right. Thanks for your close look at this work!

  6. Patrick
    March 31st, 2015 at 12:03 | #6

    Please re-examine Cheverly. I know it’s an awful pedestrian experience out there, but still, the entire Metro parking lot should be well within the walk shed, since that’s about the only thing you *can* reasonably walk to at that station.

  7. March 31st, 2015 at 12:09 | #7

    Few more tidbits on jobs data and mapping.

    1. @Payton Chung – Justin is right about using the ESRI-supplied business listing, and I just wanted to add that they use Dun & Bradstreet as their underlying source of business location data. Has some warts, but fewer warts than other data soures.

    Another editor’s note – for Version 1.0 we avoided double-counting demographies within each walkshed. There are walksheds, then where some households/jobs overlap and we apportioned them to the best degree possible to the closest station entry and that station rather than double counting. Perhaps there might be value later in looking at re-apportioning WITH double counting allowed, but for now the Atlas does not do that.

  8. Andrew
    March 31st, 2015 at 12:12 | #8

    @Shyam – The shapefile would be interesting, but I was thinking more like the map on page 2 of the atlas shown at the street level to see the “overlappiness” of the walksheds.

    And for the stats I was thinking just a file with all of the numbers contained at the bottom of each atlas page.

  9. Peccavi123
    March 31st, 2015 at 15:06 | #9

    The Tysons Corner walkshed can increase a bit. Nearly all stores within Tysons Corner Center are accessible within a half-mile walk of the south metro entrance due to the mall’s relatively new pedestrian bridge, plaza, and older ground-level entrances. On the opposite side of the mall, if you exit the mall near TGIF and the AMC theater, there is a pedestrian bridge, partially covered dedicated walkway across the garage, then another, long pedestrian bridge that leads directly to the Towers Crescent complex and MicroStrategy headquarters. I think at least the MicroStrategy building falls just within the half-mile limit. Seems like a stretch, but I witness dozens of people walk through the mall and out the other side daily. Including these places would add hundreds or thousands of jobs to the walkshed.

    Similarly, there are a series of indoor walkways, escalators, and bridges leading south from Ballston’s entrance that provide nearly direct and entirely indoor access to Ballston Common Mall and points south.

  10. March 31st, 2015 at 15:49 | #10

    Good afternoon, everyone.

    Love the comments – keep em coming and we will try to validate some of the walkability suggestions and see about augmenting the walksheds.

    In the meantime, the shapefiles for the walksheds are uploaded here:

    https://planitmetro.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/WalkSheds2015.zip

    Have fun with them and we’d love to see what you put together. Please note that if you choose to republish the WalkScore data to be mindful of their usage guidelines, found here:

    https://www.walkscore.com/trademark-use.shtml

    -sk

  11. John
    March 31st, 2015 at 21:38 | #11

    @Andrew
    I second this. Thanks!

  12. Kelley
    April 1st, 2015 at 00:39 | #12

    Re: Wiehle-Reston East At the top of the walkshed, it should extend from one side to the other as the W&OD trail, heavily used by walkers and bikers to and from the station, cuts right through there. At the bottom of the circle, the walkshed should extend to include the Lake Thoreau Loop — a paved trail owned by Reston Association which is heavily used. And in the section that runs along Sunrise Valley Drive, there is a paved walkway all the way west to Soapstone (it’s not great, but it is paved). I ride and walk these areas regularly, and participate in pedestrian/bike counts, so I know the walkshed is expanding. I suspect some of this is also seasonable. It’s a lot easier to get excited about walking to the station when you know you’ll be walking home in the light and/or good weather.

  13. April 1st, 2015 at 10:31 | #13

    @Kelley –

    Thanks so much for the suggestions and to everyone, if you can help us improve our walksheds with either expansions or contractions based on your experiences, it would be great to scan/send your suggestions to planning@wmata.com with the subject line “Walkshed”.

    Thanks, all!

    SK

  14. Redline SOS
    April 27th, 2015 at 10:12 | #14

    Your walkshed in Wheaton is way too small. I’m walking on a daily basis from .95 miles. The lack of timely bus service through the neighborhoods is one of the biggest problems is the area. I don’t want to catch a bus in my neighborhood to Glenmont, to Medical Center or White Flint (granted RideOn)…I want to catch a bus to Wheaton.

  15. Michael
    April 28th, 2015 at 17:48 | #15

    @Redline SOS
    I’m glad that you’re willing to walk so long a distance to Metro!

    As we have discussed in the recent posts on walk sheds, we are developing them at a half-mile distance along the walk network. It’s not to say that people don’t walk from greater distances, just that we need to draw a line somewhere in order to assess what land uses will generate significant ridership. For each person outside a walk shed who actually walks to the station, there is likely another person inside the walk shed who doesn’t.

    See this post about how we’ve defined our walk sheds: https://planitmetro.com/2014/06/10/whats-a-walk-shed-to-transit/

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