Access Across America: Walk 2023

Nearly half of top US cities experienced increases in job walkability

Access Across America: Walk 2023, which estimates access to jobs by walking in the top 50 metro areas, reveals the importance of urban form and pedestrian connections in the largest US cities. It follows last year’s 2022 report, which was the first national calculation of job walkability since 2014.

The changes from year to year in the local access mode of walking were more positive than auto and transit—about half of US large cities had higher average access to job opportunities via walking in 2023 than they did in 2022. Charlotte and Cincinnati deserve special mention as those cities were in the top 5 of increased access for each mode of walking, biking, and transit. In both Cincinnati and Charlotte, residents could on average reach 4% more job destinations by walking/rolling. While the overall average walk accessibility is highest in the urban centers of New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Seattle, only one of these cities saw year over year improvement (Chicago, at 1.8% higher walk accessibility).

The top five cities for job walkability (New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Seattle) share density and a job-housing mix that provides the highest access to jobs by walking or rolling residents. Still, access is highly variable within these urban areas, with some residents having very high pedestrian accessibility—but most having very little. Even in the New York City urban area, the average resident would expect to reach fewer than 1% of regional jobs in a 30-minute walk or roll.

Walk mode share for commute trips in the US is typically very low, making up about 2.4% nationally of all journeys to work in the United States, making it the third most widely used commute mode after driving and transit. Younger minority workers and workers living in lower income households typically share higher rates of walking to work.

The researchers found some places actually have better walking access to jobs for those lower-wage workers. In places like Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Cleveland, lower-wage residents have better connections by walking or rolling to jobs in the city than do higher-wage workers.

The cities that make up the top 10 walking accessibility ranks all exhibit a combination of density and amenable walking routes which often accompanies higher-density urban cores. But there is still significant variation within this group. New York and San Francisco are the two cities that offer the highest walking accessibility among all 50 metropolitan areas, either on average for all workers, or for workers in higher- or lower-wage categories. Boston and Los Angeles appear in higher ranks in average accessibility for lower-wage workers, while Chicago and Washington D.C. rank higher in accessibility for higher-wage workers.

In major cities like San Francisco and Boston, the concentration of jobs and residents with walkable connections means that they are 2nd and 3rd for job access by walking while being 12th and 10th for total employment, respectively. It is instructive to compare these cities to Dallas, which has the 4th highest employment but is 19th in walkable job access.

Rankings are determined by a weighted average of accessibility, giving a higher weight to closer jobs. Jobs reachable within ten minutes are weighted most heavily, and jobs are given decreasing weights as travel time increases up to 60 minutes.

Key factors affecting the rankings for any metro area include the number of jobs available and where they are located, the availability of roads, paths, sidewalks, and other pedestrian-accessible routes, and population size, density, and location. Proximity to destinations is implicitly important in the mode of walking, due to its lower speeds.

This annual nationwide data is used to guide key transportation and land-use policy decisions. State departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations and transit agencies can apply the data to performance goals related to congestion, reliability and sustainability. In addition, detailed accessibility evaluation can help in selecting between project alternatives and prioritizing investments.