The walk score of the homes in Great Neck are artificially low in www.zillow.com which is a home valuation web sitedue to the fact that the MTA or the LIRR trains do not provide them with the transit data.

This has depressed the home prices in the area. It would be greatly appreciated if Google can help to correct this anomaly and ask MTA and LIRR to report the transit feeds for Great Neck, NY

The slides are now online.

Original Post: 11/5/09

I'm attending the Congress for New Urbanism Transportation Summit here in Portland this week (where I've had the opportunity to meet several other transportation bloggers!).

For me the highlight presentation on opening day on Wednesday was about the safety affects of different street network types.

The study was based on looking at all cities in California with population of 40,000 or greater. The surprising finding was that cities built before 1950 are safer (in terms of both serious injuries and fatalities for all classes of users: auto drivers/passengers, cyclists and pedestrians) than cities built after 1950.

The differences appears to be in the type of street network. Compact street grids seem to be safer, compared to the arterial-collector-local street 'tree' style of street network popular in post-war development.

This explains a lot here in Portland, particularly the difference in traffic safety between inner neighborhoods new parts of Portland near or east of 82nd Avenue (illustrated by an example from current news).

I'll post a link to the research report when it's available online.

I would also note that the late Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation, was a trail transit advocate, evening making that point while serving on an infrastructure panel for the Bush administration.

I note some scenes in this video from Portland, and local videographer Dan Kaufman appears in the credits.

Dinner Out on Thanksgiving? originally appeared on About.com Portland, OR on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 10:46:42.

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