walk ...

once a week instead of driving - even if it's just 1.5 miles to the store. Just once a week. There are approximately 70,000 of us living in Asheville. That means .... 70,000 X 3 miles (1 round trip to the store)= 210,000 miles in one week. 210,000 miles x 52 weeks in the year = 10,920,000 miles in a year. How much does gas cost a gallon today? How many days a year do we have Orange level ozone around here? You can do that math.

In our family, we ride bikes and walk a good bit so I have learned the best ways around town and granted... we all know this isn't a very 'bike friendly' town.

At any rate, I saw this post a few days ago and it made me think about tools to aid in using less gas and therefore - GoogleMaps will now be providing walking directions - in select locations to what some have said 'random' users (I can't find it for anywhere yet) and I'm sure it will be beta FOREVER.

This kind of mapping applicaiton is nice in a town like Asheville with major roads, interstates and river going through the heart of it. At least we are small (all the more reason you should be walking or riding) and most of us know how to avoid the interestate but give it try the next time you visit a place you aren't so familiar with the Washington DC.

Google wasn't the first to do this ... you could always tell MapQuest to avoid interstates which is surely a lot of what the walking directions in Google does and Ask.com has had walking directions for some time now.

Google's new 'walking directions' service will surely grow as they build the database of pedestrian trails in towns that aren't in the normal street databases their mapping application is currently based on.