Is that amount of time common to walk in places in the world where cars don’t dictate the layout of the community?
Im going to be making this walk tomorrow, no worries, I’m just curious if its normal in other places. Maps says its 1hour15minues for 2.3miles or 3.7Km.
I lived in a town of around 5k that was all within 9 km2 and there it was great because you could walk/bike everywhere and there was a regular bus that took you to the next town over that was even smaller that was also walkable, really the only time you needed a car was going to do outdoor sports or if you needed to get any further than the other town because the next closest town was around 120km away
I also lived in a city of around 160k that was considered one of the most bikeable cities in the country and you could bike to the stores but even then you would end up having to bike around cars on roads going 75km/hr which isn’t super fun and there were busses but they generally didnt run frequently enough to rely on so even things like going to the gym or the grocery store usually involved a car
I grew up in the suburban hell which represents large chunks of America where it was around 5-10km to any store and your only real option was driving
Where I currently live there are busses but they don’t really run frequently to rely on and while the downtown area is decently walkable there aren’t any good sidewalks or bike lanes to get there so most people drive to the downtown. But there aren’t really any grocery stores in the down town area all the shops are more niche shops or bars/reastaurants so you still basically have to own a car
So of all those the first one was the only one you could comfortably live without a car
Thanks for the reply. That really clarifies a few things. No wonder why they call it a suburban hell.
Anyway about the shopping thing. In walkable places, the largest shopping centers tend to be close metro/train/bus stations, so you can easily do your shopping on the way home. I guess that’s not the case in America, now is it?
We have a lot of absolutely massive stores, as in around 4000 m^2 and then they have parking lots that are generally even larger so a single grocery store can take up 10,000 m^2 and then they are usually in the same lot as massive sporting goods or clothes stores of comparable sizes. So you end up with these giant clumps of stores but with the only way of getting there is to drive or walk along a highway