Considering a Move? You Can Now Check Your Dream Home's “Bikeability” with Zillow
Zillow, the popular real estate app, is responding to the bike boom in the U.S. by letting users see how “bikeable” a neighborhood is when viewing a house listing.
Zillow recently added a Bike Score in addition to its Walk Score and Transit Score.
Whether you’re actually looking for a new home or you’re just cruising real estate listings and drooling over open-concept living areas, Zillow is likely an app you already have downloaded on your phone or bookmarked on your web browser. And this week, Zillow made itself even more appealing to cyclists by introducing a Bike Score alongside of its Walk Score and Transit Score, so you can see just how easy it would be to pedal to work from your dream house.
Zillow licensed the Bike Score technology from Walk Score, which it also uses on the site, thanks to the increased interest in cycling in recent years. According to Zillow, the Bike Score measures the “bikeability” of a home’s surrounding area on a scale of one to 100, based on the presence of nearby bike lanes and trails, nearby hills, destinations and road connectivity, and the number of bike commuters in the area. The Bike Score methodology was developed by experts at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia, along with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and data gleaned from the pre-existing Walk Score.
So, how is a Bike Score truly measured? It’s determined by the following four components, which are equally weighted:
The Bike Lane Score is based on bike lane infrastructure from Open Street map. Zillow notes that the score includes all on- and off-street bike lanes and paths, including painted reminders about bikes sharing the roads (a.k.a. sharrows).
The Hill Score is sourced with information in the National Elevation Dataset from the United States Geological Survey. The steepest grade within a 200-meter radius is taken and scored.
Destinations and Connectivity is measured using a modified version of Zillow’s Walk Score, allowing for a bit more distance between destinations since you’ll be pedaling, not walking.
Bicycle Mode Share was included not just to add in if an area has a bike share, but to also confirm that an area has a high cyclist population. Researchers quickly realized that a bike share wasn’t the only indicator of a strong commuter community, since some areas don’t have much bike infrastructure, but still have huge cycling populations. They cited Portland as an example: A bike share number doesn’t come close to showcasing how strong Portland’s cycling community is. So, instead, Zillow uses the U.S. Census and “create[s] a one-kilometer moving window over the census tract level data and normalize[s] bicycle mode share” to determine a score. (I sort of wish Zillow had taken its data from Strava for this, to be honest!)
With that information, it developed this scoring system, outlined on its Bike Score methodology page:
90 to 100: Biker’s Paradise—“Daily errands can be accomplished on a bike.”
70 to 89: Very Bikeable—“Biking is convenient for most trips.”
50 to 69: Bikeable—“Some bike infrastructure.”
0 to 49: Somewhat Bikeable—“Minimal bike infrastructure.”
Now, this Bike Score is obviously more focused on commuter-based biking—looking at how easy it would be to run errands rather than slam out hill intervals. In fact, the Hill Score is higher when an area is flatter; so if you’re hoping for a climber’s paradise, a low Hill Score would be your preference.
For example, when looking at a home in this writer’s favorite area for riding in New Jersey, it scored only 26 as a Bike Score. True, there’s no easy access to shops, nor are there bike lanes, but the area has some of the best twisting roads, short and punchy climbs, and sneaky sections of singletrack around. So avid cyclists hoping to find out how good the training is in the area should probably cross-reference with Strava’s Heatmaps before dismissing a house just because of a low Bike Score.
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