Portsmouth Most Walkable NH City

I love Portsmouth, NH.  I can't imagine living anywhere else really. 

I just read about one more reason to like it in a new report from prevention.com.  They ranked 500 cities for walking, walking friendliness, and actual walkers vs drivers.  Portsmouth topped the list for NH, and game in 58th nationally.  Not bad for a city of about 23,000 people.  One thing I didn't know: "Portsmouth has the state's highest percentage of mass transit riders and one of its lowest cars-to-household ratings."  Of course, I think Portsmouth could do better, and that doesn't bode well for other big cities such as Rochester that didn't fair well at all.  Durham wasn't even on the list, which means it was either too smal, or the transit system didn't offset for the sprawl of campus and downtown.

Speaking of walking... in the warmer months I walk to work and back.  Its about a half mile each way, and is really needed as I tend to sit in front of a computer otherwise.  We also live downtown, so walk to clubs, restaurants, entertainment and such. In the summer there are weeks that I don't use my car at all.  This is offset by my wife, who drives around the state of NH every day for her job.  Good thing we have Priusii (plural for Prius?).

There is certainly room for improvement.  Lots of talk has been done about bike paths, and work has been done, but I would love to see more.  Also, the Islington St. corridor is due to be redone in the next 10 years which looks to widen sidewalks, more pocket gardens, etc.  This is paticularly important to me as we live on that corridor and I work on the same corridor (one mile long stretch of road).