How transit-accessible is your building?

A D.C. startup has a new tool to assess how easy it is to get to a location without a car.

At the end of September, TransitScreen debuted a website called MobilityScore which rates a building based on how easy it is to access via multiple transportation modes. We caught up with TransitScreen’s team last week to learn more about how the scoring works.

“MobilityScore is basically everything you see on the TransitScreen quantified into a number,” TransitScreen communications manager Rachel Karitis said. “So for any address, it will tell you how easy it is to get around without a car.”

According to Karitis, a location’s MobilityScore is an amalgam of data points such as nearby public transit, how many bikeshares are close and how long it takes to hail a Lyft. The availability of bikes available in a Capital Bikeshare dock is also taken into account. All that information is averaged over a seven-day period, and a score between 0 and 100 is generated.

TransitScreen’s office has a MobilityScore of 98, for instance. After entering in their Desales Street address, site users can the score along with a map of nearby transportation options. They will also a breakdown of which kinds of options are the most prevalent.

 

It’s been a busy month for the high-growth startup, considering TransitScreen only finished settling into that new office last week, as we reported on Friday, and even more so when the timeline for MobilityScore is considered.

“We came up with the idea over a year ago. We just started developing it six weeks ago.” TransitScreen CEO Matt Caywood said.

The early rollout does mean TransitScreen has more work ahead of it. MobilityScore is currently not mobile friendly and doesn’t include information on handicapped transportation.

“We are working on mobile-optimizing the site to make it easier to use on the go,” Caywood said. He also shared plans to provide more detailed breakdowns of transportation options and to incorporate date from the dockless bikeshares we recently reported moving into D.C.

“Our objective with MobilityScore is to be totally future-proof,” he said.

Currently, the MobilityScore site allows users to check addresses in 30 cities in the U.S., and the five in Canada. MobilityScores can also be found on the upper right-hand corner of transit screens.