If you’ve been singing the lyrics “I walk a lonely road” a lot lately, you’re not… alone (
well, in a sense)
. Columbus roads are actually even lonelier than many, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
If national averages indicate anything, it’s that roads overall
may have been
more lonely during the past few years. According to a
by Streetlight, annual average daily walking trips dropped 36% in the US between 2019 and 2022.
How does that national average shake out in the Columbus metro area, and where are the best spots to raise those national trend (and step count) numbers? Let’s take a look.
By the numbers
- -46% | Percent change in walking trips in Ohio
- -47% | Percent change in walking trips in Columbus
- 41 | Columbus’s score out of 100 on Walk Score’s walkability meter
What does a percent change in walking trips mean? Say a metro area sees a -50% change in walking trips. This means, on average, walking trips declined by 50% in that area. (
For the record, none of the top 100 metros in the study saw that much of a decline — the biggest dip was 49% in Akron, OH