The Greensboro City Council gives verbal support to sidewalks and walking trails regularly, but according to the Website Walk Score, it’s all talk.
Walk Score ranks Greensboro as one of the least walkable cities with a population of over 200,000 in the country.
Greensboro has a Walk Score of 29.4. By comparison San Francisco, which Walk Score ranks first, has a score of 88.7. New York is second with a score of 88 and Jersey City third with a score of 86.6.
North Carolina overall ranks low in walkability according to Walk Score. Fayetteville was next to last in the country with a score of 21.4. Winston-Salem is worse than Greensboro with a score of 22.5, and so is Charlotte with a score of 26.4. Durham is a little better with a score of 30.3 as is Raleigh with a score of 31.3.
Population is definitely a factor in how Walk Score ranked cities, but some cities of a similar size ranked much higher than Greensboro. Buffalo, New York, had a Walk Score of 66.6 and Newark, New Jersey a score of 75.9.
The Walk Score comment on Greensboro states, “Greensboro is a Car-Dependent city – Most errands require a car.”
According to Walk Score the most walkable neighborhoods in Greensboro are College Hill, Downtown, the Brice Street area, Fisher Park and the Historic Dunleath Neighborhood.
Of the 103 neighborhoods in Greensboro ranked by Walk Score, the worst neighborhood for walkability is Northern Shores, which had a 0 Walk Score. Lake Jeanette scored a 1 and Harbor, Sedgefield Lakes and Garriage Woods all scored 2.
Sunset Hills, which sees an increase in walkers during this time of year to see the spectacular Christmas lights, had a score of 48.
It may be notable that in Greensboro the four-mile long Downtown Greenway, which was started in 2001, so far has three miles completed and one mile to go.
That’s pretty par for the course, “Just talk” as pointed out in the article. Heck, about 21 years to pave 3 miles for our GSO walk path you could have walked across the country back and forth several times! This one sided council constantly talk about improving the city for the those less fortunate but nothing has really manifested into reality but they keep getting voted back in office; how, why? Food deserts, lack of access (walk ability?) to other parts of the city, needed health services, needs that have been listed but never solidified. I for one would love to be able to bike to the downtown market or local shops as would thousands of other citizens at the pace this council moves most of us will be dead by then or have moved to much better cities.
Perhaps a dig into the progress of said greenway… proposed in 1999 and still far from complete (and not really convenient for running/biking due to all the major road crossings) would be a good read. Or maybe I misunderstood the intent of the Downtown Greenway, because if walking to look at the big art installations was the sole purpose, maybe it hit ok.
Not true. Greensboro voters approved and the city and county have built in Greensboro more than 100 miles of wonderful hiking trails … more than any other locale in the state.
I don’t think that article was about walking trails.
This town was not designed for walkers.
A few years ago there was some controversy in our area regarding the creation of a very short bike lane, requiring that a turn lane on a busy thoroughfare and intersection be sacrificed to do so. Ironically, this was close to Northern Shores / Lake Jeannette. Comments on Next Door Neighbor got quite heated. The idea was to promote more physical activity. However, many believed this iteration was poorly planned and would not help achieve the stated objective. Bike lanes make sense in many locales. However, to them serving as a means to increase physical activity throughout the city is very limited. They appear to function for a small percentage of the city population. I believe that a larger proportion of city residents cannot afford bikes or the safety equipment. Others cannot ride due to physical limitations. Get our walking score up? To provide more access for walking safety in the future, each time a residential development is proposed the developer must include sidewalks in the plans. It would be wise to include this requirement for any land development.
To see what can be done for older, established neighborhoods, the city needs to survey individual neighborhoods to see which have the most immediate need on a safety basis for access within the neighborhood or access to the closest safe walking area. This can be addressed over a period of time as funds become available.
Have you ever noticed the nice sidewalks in areas where no one lives and no one is going to walk! Poor planning by someone.
You are comparing country to city, apples to souffle.
San Francisco was built as a city to walk around. The businesses were built with living quarters above them, the homes built next to the businesses, the doctor next to the barber next to the butcher, it was the original “15-minute city” just like those in the Northeast like Boston, New York, Philidelphia, Washington DC. People lived in small neighborhoods where everything they needed was within walking distance or a short buggy ride of their home and the city continued growing outward based on that plan. My mom, who grew up in SF, didn’t learn to drive until she was 32 years old because she walked everywhere or took a trolly or cable car whose lines were outside her door. She walked all over the neighborhood to shop several times a week for groceries and sundries, to school, and to the movies and theatre, walking and public transportation were a way of life and few people owned private vehicles until after WWII. But when soldiers came home suburbs were built and “walkability” quickly became a thing of the past in California as urban sprawl meant cities grew outward and CA became overly dependent on cars. Sure, cities had sidewalks that we skated and walked on, but people weren’t walking to work and the store or doctor’s office, sidewalks were to play on and visit the neighbors. Walkability is a “green” idea, something people in these walkable cities wouldn’t actually desire in most cases if they were asked (honestly, I walked over a mile to high school in Southern CA on really hot days, in rain, in the cold, and I’d much rather have ridden in a car without air conditioning, which ours didn’t have at the time).
Greensboro originally was a small city surrounded by even smaller farming communities. There were clusters of farms that had a small town every ten miles or so (about a day’s walk) around the County (hence you had the communities of Oak Ridge, Summerfield, Stokesdale, Browns Summit, Pleasant Garden, Whitsett, Pinecroft, Sedgefield, Jamestown, High Point, Guilford College, etc. That original city center was walkable back in the day as anyone who now ventures downtown knows. Back before cars, if you lived in downtown Greensboro you walked to the stores, city and county offices, lawyers, saloons and eating places, the train station, and the newspaper offices, it was all there. Colleges weren’t far away, doctor offices were in the neighborhood, hotels were nearby, and things were within a reasonable walking or buggy ride. If you lived in or just on the outskirts of town it was walkable.
It wasn’t until the last 20 years or so with so many new people moving into the area, with annexation and the growth of new housing developments that so many cars have begun driving into GSO from the outskirts of town. As jv said above, “this town was not designed for walkers” because once the area grew beyond the original center of the city people had to drive from the place they lived to get to work, to the grocery store, to the doctor. When I first moved to Guilford County in 1978 I lived in Stokesdale but have always had jobs in Greensboro, that’s not walkable. My doctors and vet have been in Summerfield, not walkable. The hospital is in GSO and Winston, not walkable. And when I moved to Gethsemane Community we lived over 10 miles from a grocery store for over 20 years, not walkable.
But don’t be fooled, people in SF don’t walk to work as most live in bedroom communities. My dad drove 40 miles north to Petaluma every night which took him about 50 minutes, a drive that now takes over 2 hours. Most people drive further north to places like Santa Rosa or south toward San Jose or west to Fremont. People in SF drive out of town to work in San Jose or Palo Alto or Sonoma. People who walk in the City are tourists, college students, and professors, but to live in CA you need a car because relying on the CalTrans system isn’t an ideal way to get where you want to go.
As for thinking “walkability” is having trails and hiking places I think people are missing the green agenda of the “15 Minute City” and should do some research on the concept. The new city manager is a staunch supporter of the concept and the idea is something he pushed while in Charlotte and has mentioned for GSO. The City and County are already working on ideas for public transportation in this area and the logic of it is confusing as people don’t live where they work as they did in the days of Cone Mills (White Oak Neighborhood, Proximity Neighborhood). The US is not Europe and except for the Northeast, we tend to rely heavily on our cars for transportation and are an independent lot. This will take a lot of retraining, re-education, rethinking, and belief in the green agenda.
Hiking trails and connectivity in urban areas are very different. Hiking trails are utilized primarily for health and recreation by folks with leisure time and resources to travel to these trails. Urban connections allow neighborhoods to be safer and allow folks without cars to get around. Mandate Mayor has allowed our city to lag far behind all the while trumpeting all the millions raised for greenways by bonds etc but all we have to show is fractured greenways and obnoxious art installations where homeless camps used to be.
People will walk to places that are close by, In general I am speaking about small businesses like coffee shops, restaurants, pubs and small stores/groceries.
The older neighborhoods are more walkable because they are closer in proximity to small commercial businesses.
It will be very difficult to retro-fit our suburban sprawl neighborhoods with such infrastructure but not impossible. Greensboro’s historically enormous parking requirements by nature encourage car traffic and not foot traffic. The city will have to change their rules if they seriously want to promote walking. Building greenways to nowhere is not going to do anything.
GSO has amazing, walkable places for exercise. Sidewalks, Greenway, trails, and neighborhood roads.
If this score is based around how easily you can get to work, the store, etc without a car, then they’re right — GSO isn’t really laid out for that. But the second the 8 degree temps got up to 35, I saw people walking EVERYWHERE!
There ain’t no walkers! Perhaps from the mall to the nearest space in the parking lot.
Driving down most any street, how many people do you see on the residential sidewalks? Mebbe a few walking the dog. In my area, that’s about it. Still, the city is building yet another sidewalk directly across from a sidewalk that is of use to dog walkers. And yet the city continues the make-work projects to keep the faithful employed.
Many of us are having a hard time just getting by week by week, year by year. The govt not only creates many social problems, but also they make it worse.
Only way I know to stop it, is to stop giving them money obtained by extortion. Any other suggestions?
I have lived all over the country, and definitely agree with this assessment. Part of the analysis should have been drivers’ attitudes towards pedestrians. When i moved here, I wanted to get back into running. I went out three times, and all three times I nearly was hit by a car. The danger I noticed in trying to be a pedestrian on Greensboro roads made me give up on my attempts to start running, at least until I can move away from this place.
Yeah over 20 years and 3 miles..Wow.. Greensboro is like this little train that could…. But then couldn’t.
Greensboro’s doing some good things and 7172 building Wendover was probably one of the best things they’ve ever done… But yeah this Greenway has a great name….. Spent over a million for the tunnel to go under cone boulevard instead of a crosswalk about 10 years ago maybe that’s why they can’t finish it… Well they sure did make it bike friendly in some places but sidewalks require 10 times the money! With the highest property tax rate in the state higher than Raleigh and Charlotte you think they could be a little bit more wise but they’re just Democrats… That’s what you got to remember. Thank you Happy New Year
I agree that walkability with safety is sorely lacking. I live in one of the old neighborhoods in Starmount where there are no sidewalks, single track lanes, inadequate/absent street lighting and even golf carts. Some of us have been concerned about this but our concerns have been largely ignored.
These older, forgotten neighborhoods need attention. Public safety is a priority, not just for the newer neighborhoods.