Moving In to Move Around: Checking Good Transportation
Written by: Ensemble Digital Media Team | Aug 28, 2026
Blog Summary
- Transportation affects your time, budget, and everyday quality of life.
- A walkability score is a useful starting point, but buyers should experience the actual streets, sidewalks, crossings, and bike routes for themselves.
- Good neighborhood transportation gives you practical choices, whether that means driving, walking, biking, taking public transit, or using rideshare.
- Testing your real commute and calculating fuel, parking, tolls, maintenance, transit, and time costs can reveal the true cost of a home’s location.
- Transportation can influence a property’s long-term appeal, so buyers should consider location for both today and the future.
A house can be beautiful, affordable, and located in a neighborhood you like, but if getting to work takes an hour and a half every morning, the excitement can wear off quickly. The same goes for a home that leaves you dependent on a car for every grocery run, school drop-off, appointment, or weekend activity. That is why transportation should be considered as one of the major home-buying factors you consider before making an offer.
Make Transportation Near Home a Priority
Your house’s location determines how much time, money, and effort you spend moving through your everyday life. Two homes with similar prices can create very different monthly budgets: one lets you walk to several destinations, while the other requires a car for almost everything.
In 2022, transportation accounted for 15% of average household spending. While households in the lowest income group consumed about 30% of after-tax income that year (BTS, 2023). That’s not a small line item.
When you compare homes, don’t only ask, “Can I afford the mortgage?” Ask, “What will it cost me to live here?“
Always consider fuel, insurance, maintenance, parking, tolls, transit fares, rideshare trips, and, perhaps most importantly, your time. After all, neighborhood transportation is a big part of homeownership costs.
How to Assess Good Neighborhood Transportation
Think about your normal week. Where do you go every morning? Where do your children need to be? How often do you visit family? Do you regularly go to the gym, grocery store, restaurants, church, medical appointments, or other places? And what happens when one person needs the car while someone else needs to go somewhere else?
Ask yourself how many different ways you could get there from home. Could you walk? Bike? Take a bus or train? Drive? Use a rideshare service? The more practical choices you have, the more useful the neighborhood transportation may be.
1. Check Walking and Biking
A walking score evaluates how easily residents can reach nearby amenities through walking. It also checks pedestrian-friendly factors such as block length and intersection density. A score from 90 to 100 is classified as a “Walker’s Paradise,” while lower scores indicate increasing car dependence (Walk Score, n.d.).
That’s useful, but a number can only tell you so much.
Before you rely on the score, walk the neighborhood yourself. Check the route to the grocery store, coffee shop, park, school, or other places you would actually visit. Is there a sidewalk the entire way? Do you have to cross a busy street? Does the route feel comfortable? Try it at a time when you would realistically use it, because a five-minute walk on a quiet Sunday morning can feel very different from the same walk during weekday traffic.
The score also shouldn’t be treated as a shortcut for determining whether a home is a better investment. In a study of nearly 20,000 single-family transactions in Orange County, California, researchers found that the relationship between walkability and home prices varied by property characteristics, including the number of garage spaces (Chernobaia & Ma, 2022). That suggests that walkability is only one part of the location equation.
Don’t assume that a particular walking score automatically makes a home better or more valuable. Ask whether the neighborhood’s transportation options fit your household.
2. Test Your Transit Options and Commute
Don’t just look at what’s nearby. Test how you would actually get around from home.
Start with public transit. How far is the closest bus stop or train station? How often does it run? What routes are available? How late does service operate? Can you get where you need to go without multiple transfers? A bus stop two blocks away isn’t much help if the bus comes once an hour or doesn’t connect to the places you regularly visit.
The same goes for driving. Google Maps can show you the distance, but it can’t tell you what that trip will feel like every morning. Drive the route during your actual commute time and pay attention to freeway entrances, major intersections, school zones, toll roads, construction areas, and the bottlenecks that can turn a short drive into a long one.
High public transit ridership also shows that transit remains an important part of how people get around. U.S. public transportation recorded approximately 7.7 billion trips in 2024, a 7% increase from 2023 (APTA, 2025). But a transit option is only useful when it fits your routine. Check the entire network, including rideshare pickup areas, bike-share options where available, park-and-ride facilities, and connections between different transportation modes.
Then look at the total cost. Fuel is only one part of the equation. Add parking, tolls, transit fares, rideshare trips, vehicle maintenance, and the extra mileage that comes with a longer commute. A home that saves you money on the purchase price may not feel like a bargain if you spend significantly more getting to and from it every week.
And remember that commute patterns can change. A buyer working from home today may return to an office later. A family may add another job, a new school, or an additional driver. The best transportation setup can handle change.
You don’t need to eliminate driving as a form of neighborhood transportation unless you want to. But the goal is to give yourself more than one practical way to get around.
READ RELATED ARTICLE
2-minute read
Make social media less time-consuming with easy scheduling and publishing tools.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. Clicking on these links and buying these products may result in us receiving a commission at no additional cost to you.
3. Evaluate Future Value
Transportation accessibility and residential property values are related, though the effect varies by location, property type, transportation mode, and neighborhood conditions. Residential properties near planned rail stations gained a premium after the project was announced, with the premium increasing after the line became operational (Lau et al., 2021).
However, not every home near a train station will automatically appreciate more. Real estate is far too local for that kind of promise.
At the same time, transportation can have downsides. Living immediately next to a major freeway may give you excellent driving access but also expose you to traffic noise and other concerns. Being next to a train station may be convenient, while being directly beside active tracks may not appeal to every buyer.
READ RELATED ARTICLE
Before the Keys, Check the Routes
A transportation check can also reveal something bigger about a property: whether the neighborhood will still work when life changes.
Maybe the job you have today won’t be the job you have three years from now. Maybe your teenager will start driving, your household will add another car, or you will eventually want to spend less time behind the wheel. The places that matter most to you may change, too. A location that gives you only one way to get around can become restrictive when your routine changes.
The best choice isn’t always the house closest to a freeway, train station, or shopping center. It is often the home that gives you options without forcing you to pay for convenience you will never use.
Pacific Playa Realty agents understand Los Angeles communities at the neighborhood level. We can help you look at a property in context, from the streets around it to the routes that connect it to the rest of your life. If you are comparing homes and want to understand what living there will actually involve, connect with Pacific Playa Realty and let’s look at the location as carefully as the house.
American Public Transportation Association. (2025). Public transportation ridership update. https://www.apta.com/resource/public-transportation-ridership-update/
Bureau of Transportation Statistics. (2023, September 19). The household cost of transportation: Is it affordable? U.S. Department of Transportation. https://www.bts.gov/data-spotlight/household-cost-transportation-it-affordable
Chernobaia, E., & Ma, Z. (2022). The effect of walkability on house prices. Journal of Housing Research, 31(1), 53–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/10527001.2021.2007583
Lau, J. C. Y., et al. (2021). Transport infrastructure, accessibility and residential property values: Evidence from Hong Kong. Built Environment Project and Asset Management, 12(2), 163–179. https://doi.org/10.1108/BEPAM-01-2021-0019
Walk Score. (n.d.). Walk Score methodology. Retrieved August 25, 2026, from https://www.walkscore.com/methodology.html
Up Next
Most Popular