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submitted 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) by dch82@lemmy.zip to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

I've heard the legends of having to drive to literally everywhere (e.g. drive thru banks), but I have no clue how far apart things are.

I live in suburban London where you can get to a big supermarket in 10 minutes of walking, a train station in 20 minutes and convenience stores are everywhere. You can get anywhere with bus and train in a few hours.

Can someone help a clueless British lemmyposter know how far things are in the US?

EDIT

Here are my walking distances:

  • To the nearest convenience store: 250m
  • To the nearest chain supermarket: 350m
  • To the bus stop: 310m
  • To the nearest park: 400m
  • To the nearest big supermarket: 1.3km
  • To the nearest library: 1.2km
  • To the nearest train station: 1km

Straight-line distance to Big Ben: 16km

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[-] JoeyJoeJoeJr@lemmy.ml 4 points 54 minutes ago

I've personally lived in places where the closest convenience store was 2.25 km, and the grocery store was nearly 18km, as well as places where a convenience store was literally a part of my building, and grocery stores were walkable distances.

The U.S. is enormous and varied. Take a look at truesizeof and compare the U.S. and Europe (don't forget to add Alaska and Hawaii - they won't be included in the contiguous states). Consider how different London is from rural Romania.

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 points 39 minutes ago* (last edited 37 minutes ago)

Depends where you live.

In a city? 75% of everything I need is right across the street.

In a rural town? Before I moved to the city, I had to drive 30-45 miles away to do literally anything. There were busses, but they only came around once in the morning and once more in the evening. And they didn't always go where you wanted directly, so you'd have to spend like an entire day just to get to a place.

Nearest big landmark everyone might recognize is the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. And thats 78 miles away in a straight line.

[-] FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 25 minutes ago

about 20 minutes to the grocery store, 5 to the convenience store, about 10 to the bus stop 20 to the park. West coast.

[-] DaCrazyJamez@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 hour ago

One thing that deserves special note is the US, aside from being more spread out in general, has a lot more sprawling suburbs with downtown areas.....if you live near the downtown, then everything is walkable, but maybe 20% of a towns population in any given suburb will be that close, and thats a generous estimate.

As an American who has lived in the EU, walking / biking like you can do there just plain is not possible for MOST of the US. As other have mentioned, if you live in a major city, or in the center of a suburb, then it may not be so bad.

On a similar note, this sprawl is the same reason that public transport on the EUs level isnt viable in the US....there would need to be too many stops and too many routes to get decent coverage, and when you math it out, having cars is the most economical decision for most of the country.

[-] IronKrill@lemmy.ca 1 points 33 minutes ago* (last edited 27 minutes ago)

I'll chime in since I'm in Canada, which is sadly just US delayed by 20 years.

I can walk to a convenience store with high prices in about 5 minutes or 360 metres and little else. It's all residential beyond there until a 25 minute walk or greater and everything is spread out. The main shopping centres you might want to walk around are an hour walk away. To reach the store I actually shop at for reasonable prices, it's a 12 minute drive or a 7400 metre walk (a miserable one with spotty sidewalks)... just for fun, it's about 45m by bus BEST CASE but realistically you will take an hour unless you hit the exact right bus at the exact moment it pulls up.

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 points 21 minutes ago* (last edited 4 minutes ago)

But that varies.

Here it's < 100m to the food shopping, pharmacy, post office, Amazon pickup, pros like dentist and barber and a hospital, as well as two gyms and a daycare. Hopping the train gets me to one of two biiig malls in about 5 or 20 min. 200m out is a plethora of doctors and specialists, 2 coffee/snack shops, and 2 of the 5 pizza places nearby. Go the km and you'll pass the Starbucks, sandwiches, park, church, more takeout, and 7-11.

We're designed for no-car though.

But distances are still crazy for visitors. People land in Toronto and ask "can we take a day trip to Banff?" Not realizing it could be 71 hours of driving to get there.

Travelling to see my family via ferry is a 5-6 hour 100km trip if I optimize it, since it's so inefficient. airplanes cost as much as 120 Starbucks medium frothy hot drinks for the round-trip, per person, so we avoid that option.

Our little pet island on the west coast, for instance, where we have some quaint buildings and such, is almost 500km long -- which could be the distance almost from dover to Scotland if I believe my AI pothead.

This land mass is huge. You have no idea.

[-] huginn@feddit.it 1 points 46 minutes ago

Nearest convenience store is 200m Chain supermarket is 200m Bus stop is 150m Library is 50m Park is 500m Train station is 800m

NYC makes everything easy

[-] kibiz0r@midwest.social 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)
  • Nearest market: 600m
  • Nearest big supermarket: 5.2km
  • Nearest bus stop: 5km
  • Nearest park: 1km
  • Nearest library: 1.6km
  • Nearest train station: 26km

Having a small market so close is a massive improvement from my previous address, where the only option was a big supermarket 3.9km away.

[-] 1hitsong@lemmy.ml 14 points 2 hours ago

Walking distance is only part of this equation.

We have no sidewalks and I would need to cross a 6 lane interstate if I were to go to the "closest" anything.

[-] DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works 1 points 52 minutes ago

Highly dependent on where you live. Some places are very sparse, others are pretty dense.

[-] Fondots@lemmy.world 9 points 2 hours ago

So first of all, the US is big and diverse, if you hop in a car and drive from New York to LA without stopping, taking the fastest route, mostly on major highways, averaging out to something like 60+mph (about 100 km/h) you're still going to be spending just about 2 days in the car.

And in between, you're going to see a little bit of everything, mountain, plains, forest, farms, huge dense urban cities, towns small enough you can barely even call them a town, suburban sprawl, massive industrial facilities, you name it you're going to see it.

Overall, if you live in an urban area, the situation may not be too bad, cities are somewhat walkable, there's public transportation that will usually get you fairly close to where you need to go, there may even be protected bike lanes, etc. although the situation will vary wildly from one city to another.

It will even vary from one part of the city to another. You can have large sections of the city where there's no real grocery stores or other places to get your basic necessities, and you're pretty much limited to whatever you can get from corner stores, bodegas, convenience stores, etc. (mostly pre-packaged and processed foods, and if you're lucky maybe a couple pieces of fresh fruit) and if you want anything more than that you're probably looking at taking a few hours out of your day to walk a significant distance to a store or take public transit that may not go exactly where you need it, may be slow, expensive, or just a pain in the ass to deal with, etc.

Getting out into the suburbs, it's again kind of a crapshoot. There are some walkable suburbs, with wonderful shopping options, there's some that are a maze of residential developments and gated communities that come off of major roads with no sidewalks or even shoulders worth speaking of and you're taking a significant gamble trying to walk anywhere from there. There may be little or no public transportation and if there is it may not be going anywhere you need to go, or be convenient to get onto

Personally, I live towards the rural end of the suburbs, about an hour or less from a major city depending on traffic.

Damn near everything I could ever want or need is within about a half hour drive, and most of I commonly need is covered within about 15 minutes.

If I don't have a car though, my options drop off significantly. I'm looking at an hour walk one way to get to a grocery store, mostly along a long winding road with little or no shoulder and few streetlights. The only things I would really feel safe to walk to are 2 pizza shops, a small hardware store, a bar, a CVS, and gas station/convenience store, those last 2 are going to be about a half hour or longer walk, and along that winding road, but it's a stretch that at least has a half decent shoulder and some lawns to walk on for most of the way.

If you have a bike, there's a decent bike trail that will get you to some more shopping options, but it's about an hour's ride one way.

If you need to catch public transit, you'd have to walk about 2 hours to catch a bus, that line basically runs straight up and down a main road between the city and a larger, urban-ish town further out in the suburbs. There's not many options to transfer to anywhere else along the way but there's a lot along that route so if you can get to that bus most of your needs will be covered, but it doesn't run super frequently and it's not going to get you anywhere in a hurry.

Getting out into rural America, you have some small towns that are functionally self-contained, with their own grocery stores and other shopping options in-town within walking distance. Your options are limited but for the most part everything you really need is right there in town.

If you don't work in town though, and often people in these areas don't, they may be involved in farming, logging, oil/natural gas, construction, etc. and may work many miles from town, you're pretty much screwed if you don't have a car, or at least can count on carpooling with a coworker.

There's other small towns where there just isn't much of anything at all, maybe they have a gas station and a liquor store, and if you need anything else you're SOL, in some cases you may be looking at an hour or more drive to get to anything else so you can forget about walking.

Regardless of where/what kind of area you find yourself in, transportation between cities is often going to be an issue. You can probably catch a Greyhound bus or maybe Amtrak or similar between most major cities, though you may have to get a little creative with figuring out your route, but if you're trying to get to the smaller towns in between you may not have much luck.

There are, of course, nearly as many exceptions and special cases to everything I said as there are individual towns and cities.

[-] Kayday@lemmy.world 15 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I live on the edge of a small town. Google numbers:

  • To the nearest convenience store: 4.7km, 1hr 4min walk
  • To the nearest chain supermarket: 21km, 4hr 38min walk
  • To the nearest bus stop: 18km, 4hr 7min walk
  • To the nearest park: 3.4km, 47 minute walk
  • To the nearest library: 4.7km, 1hr 3min walk
  • To the nearest train station: 20km, 4hr 31 minute walk
[-] monkinto@lemmy.world 7 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Distance isn't the only factor to consider. The infrastructure is also very important for determining if a short distance is walkable.

This YouTube channel has lots of great info on the topic https://youtube.com/notjustbikes and this video in particular demonstrations that not even all short distances are necessarily walkable in the US https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54 @ 4:30 he begins to show a 800m walk in Houston from his hotel to a store.

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 3 points 2 hours ago

I live in NYC. It's one of the few large places in the US that's dense and not completely car focused.

Convenience store: 5 minute walk to several

Supermarket: several within 10 minute walk

Pharmacy: several within 10 minutes on foot

Library: I think there's two within 10-15 minutes walking

Restaurants: several within 10 minutes on foot

Subway: about 5 minute walk. There's also a bus stop there.

Very large park: 15 minutes or so

I never want to live somewhere where I need a car again. Someone I was talking to at a party the other day was like "I love having my car it's so much freedom" and I'm like aside from needing to fuel, maintain, insure, and store it I guess.

[-] helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

It depends what region your in.

City: depends where you live, i.e. how close to "downtown" you are. A lot of stuff is walking distance, but not everything. You could walk to school and get some basic food or a pharmacy. Probably need a car/bus for work or larger grocery trips.

Suberbs/town, you might be able to walk to convince store or to school/library, everything else is going to be a car or about a 30min walk. That being said, sometimes you're "deep" in the suberb and the nearest convince store is a 20-40 min walk.

Rual/farm: you need a a car to visit your neighbors. Nearest grocrey is a 30 min drive away.

[-] jonc211@programming.dev 68 points 7 hours ago

It’s not necessarily how far things are, it’s that you need a car to get to places in a sensible way.

I’m a fellow Brit, but have stayed in suburban US enough to have experienced how different it is. You might have a supermarket a couple of miles away, but if you want to attempt to walk there, you’ll often be going well out of your way trying to find safe crossing points or even roads with paved sidewalks.

Train stations are mostly used for cargo in most US cities. If you don’t have a car, you’re pretty much screwed.

Some cities are different. NYC being the obvious one. You can get about there by public transport pretty easily in most places there. San Francisco is another city that is more doable without a car, but more difficult than NYC.

I stayed near Orlando not too long ago and there it’s just endless surburban housing with shops and malls dotted about mostly along the sides of main roads. You definitely need a car there.

[-] pezmaker@programming.dev 14 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Denver isn't great with public transport either. There's at least a minimal light rail system and buses go pretty much everywhere, so that's the good part, but the city is so sprawled out that unless your destination is a direct route you're looking at an hour or more to exclusively use public transport. And that's really the main city. Start getting out into the expanded metro area and there's not many choices except for a handful of spur rail or bus lines.

It's a lot more than many American cities, especially on paper, but in practice it's pretty rough to use as a primary transport.

[-] stinerman@midwest.social 3 points 4 hours ago

Most bus systems in American cities are for people to get to work and back home. Trying to take it to, for instance, a friend's house, and you're generally going to spend about 4x the time it'd take to drive there.

[-] Hyrulian@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

Rural American here. We drive 30 mins to the nearest bigish city to do all of our grocery shopping every weekend.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 43 points 7 hours ago

Great question. London is amazing for being able to walk around, and has amazing transit. I honestly love your city, and may move there someday for it. This is mostly because London embraced transit in the early 20th century.

America went the other way, and embraced the car, and that pushed for the "American Dream". Suburbs became the normal, where people wanted an independent house farther away from the city. From there bred new problems, people needed to be able to drive their car there, which meant we needed more parking, which meant that things became further and further away.

You can actually blame parking for most of America's sprawl. Parking eats up a ton of space, and requires large roads to get people where they need to go and then massive parking lots for people to park their cars. Parking lots you can't even understand in your London mind. Then there are new problems - the parking lots are so massive that now you can't even walk to the building next door because it's half a mile just to walk to that place! So people get in their cars to drive across the street to park in the next place. This isn't exaggerated, that's just how it is. Take a look at this shopping center in Des Moines, a city where I grew up.

Americans designed cities for cars, not people. There is no way that areas like that were built for humans to move around in, it was built for people to drive to. Greenspace or walkways are not a thing, you are meant to park, walk for hundreds of meters to the front of the door, shop, and then get back in your car and drive across the big street to go to dinner. (To boot, most places won't let you leave your car either, if you're done shopping you need to move it).

The real problem is that this is all by design. We kill so much space in our cities so that drivers feel more comfortable. Honestly, I really appreciate London and how well they've done. Remember all of this next time your PM wants to "make it easier for drivers". No. Fuck the drivers. They're driving their huge metal car into your city, and wanting to have it take up space all so they don't have to walk or take a train/bus. They should have to pay extra for renting space from the city.

Amazing video on why parking is so freaking stupid in America: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8

[-] DaCrazyJamez@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I think there is one thing backwards here, the US didnt embrace the car which lead to suburbs, but embraced suburbs which lead to using cars. The decision (which really wasnt a conscious one, more just the way it worked out) is based entirely on the vast geography of the country. We have the extra space, so we used it, and needeing cars followed.

The older cities in the US that were built based on European standards all have fairly excellent public networks (NYC, Boston, Philly, etc)

[-] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Does America not have places like British retail parks? Where the parking lot is basically shared by all the large shops which are then shoulder to shoulder with each other? Maybe that's what a mall is. Though I was under three impression the shops were constrained for size there.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 4 points 2 hours ago

Maybe close to our strip mall, where q bunch of retail is in a strip of stores. It's slightly better than the image I showed, but I wouldn't call it walkable. You can at least walk to the next store, but you still are surrounded by parking, and usually on a large road, usually on the outskirts of town so you have to drive there. Then if another strip mall is built than that is the same as the picture I showed, where now you have to walk a mile to get across the parking lots, usually down the road several blocks distance to actually find a safe crossing, and then cross another massive parking lot.

We also have malls, which I always laugh at because they're trying to simulate what we don't have - a walkable neighborhood. Everybody loved them because they simulated the small shops and actually walking around, but surrounded again by miles of parking and again usually outside of town, so the only way to get there is driving.

(And if your wondering, transit "exists" in that image, in that there's one bus stop for that whole area on a route that last I checked runs once every two hours during weekdays, ending at 7pm)

[-] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

The lack of public transport is something I just can't get my head around. Most British towns shopping centres are also transport hubs. People still complain about buses etc but they're somewhat comparing it to London where many routes have 5-10 buses an hour and where any new major shopping areas will be sat on top of a tube or rail station. Britain still has large retail park carparks but you'll almost always find them served by a handful of bus routes. I don't think I'd ever be able to give up the combo of being able to walk 2 mins to the corner shop or hop the bus for ten mins for almost anything else.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 points 2 hours ago

Welcome to my primary frustration. It only takes most people to try a real city with real public transit to realize they actually like cities. Cities are fearmongered here in the states, people think they're high crime, they're dirty, they're not easy to get to, and frankly I firmly believe most of that is because of our transit. Cities are hard to get to because most of them require cars to get to. Those with actual fun downtown (that don't have good transit) involve people parking somewhere and walking around. Vegas and San Antonio are great examples.

Picture of downtown San Antonio San Antonio here, a place I genuinely had a good time in - once I parked and I could walk around. The city core is incredibly walkable - but it's surrounded by freeways that cut neighborhoods off from each other.

Having things so distant and making it hard to get into the cities makes people not want to go there, which deteriorates the city core - which then crime becomes a self fulfilling prophesy. By leaving the downtown core and never going - they unintentionally make crime worse.

There's actually a really interesting theory here in the states. People really remember fondly going to college (Uni for you brits ;)), mostly because they always had a group of friends around, they would meet up for meals, go out for drinks, and they were all in the dorms. Then they graduate and most move out to the suburbs. The theory is - do they miss college? Or do they miss having a truly walkable neighborhood, with most things nearby? Friends that they can just see when they're out walking around? A transit system that helps them get around their neighborhood easily.

How we move around fascinates me, and I think it's a huge reason for a lot of social issues we face here in the states. I'll go as far as most of them. I'll take a very extreme example. Our culture's racism would be inherently better with better transit. There's reasons why more urbanized cores are more open to other people and cultures - it's because we're normalized to it. We see people every day and know they're just like us. In suburban and rural america you aren't exposed to other people. Even if you go to work you're alone in your car, you don't experience being around others. Having something like the Tube makes it a natural gathering place, where you experience everyone around you, and a lot of those prejudices can easily fall away just by being around people.

That turned out longer than I thought! Thanks for reading this far if you did :)

[-] dch82@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 hours ago

I love how London made most residential roads 20mph so I can bike without feeling like I'm about to be crashed into at any second

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[-] athairmor@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

Here are my walking distances:

  • To the nearest convenience store (gas station): 800m
  • To the nearest chain supermarket: 1600m
  • To the bus stop: 640m
  • To the nearest park: 213m
  • To the nearest *big* supermarket: 4.3km
  • To the nearest library: 2.7km
  • To the nearest train station: 1.4km

Straight-line distance to Big Ben: 5890km

[-] dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 3 points 3 hours ago

I live in a semi rural area. My closest grocery store is 10km, but it's down the interstate, meaning even if I wanted to walk it, I couldn't. Without using the interstate it's about 15km.

My closest convenience store is only 7km, but the road i live on is not safe for walking (lots of blind curves, no sidewalks)

My nearest bus stop is 60 kilometers away, in my nearest city.

Nearest library is about 4 km past the convenience store, so 11ish klicks

Nearest train station is give or take 300 kilometers. We don't really have any train service here.

Straight line distance from me to big Ben, give or take 6,500 kilometers

[-] baronvonj@lemmy.world 31 points 7 hours ago

My work commute is minimum 40 minutes one way by car. Probably 2.5 hours by bus, with probably 20 minutes of walking, in Texas heat and humidity.

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[-] SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

As you might note, the busier and more dense a city is, the closer things can be yet the longer it takes to get somewhere per unit of distance. Unless you walk. Sometimes you're out in the burbs and something's 10 miles away but it'll take you less than 10 mins to get there.

[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Corner store with basics: 5 min Supermarket: 15 min Restaurants: 5 min Park: 3 min Bus stop: 5 min Library: 15 min Local rail: 20 min Regional/National rail: 40 min

All walking distances. I live in a neighborhood that was designed before cars existed so it’s more like Europe in terms of distances/amenities. Except our transit infrastructure is shit.

[-] Sequentialsilence@lemmy.world 7 points 5 hours ago

I live pretty close to work, it’s about 15 miles (24 km). Grocery store is about 6 miles (9.6 km) from me. I consider anything within 2 miles (3.2 km) to be “right next door.” It’s not uncommon for me to travel over 100 miles (161 km) in a day. I consider When I want to visit my Sister it’s a 1120 mile (1802 km) journey. That happens a couple times a year. The crazy thing is that that’s less than halfway across the continental US. I have to travel from the Atlantic ocean all the way across the international date line in the Pacific to get across the US, and that doesn’t include our territories, just our states.

What I have found is a better comparison is the US and Europe. Think of the european country’s as us states and you start to get an idea of the scale. 44 countries vs 50 states, $24.22 trillion vs $28.65 trillion GDP, 10.2 million sq km vs 9.8 million sq km. They are very similar.

[-] wjs018@lemmy.world 19 points 7 hours ago

This largely depends on where you are in the US. I have moved a lot over the years, from dense city centers, to the dirt roads of rural America. Here are my experiences:

NYC would probably be the most comparable to your experience in London, but seeing as I haven't lived there, I can instead talk about Boston. When I lived inside the subway range in Boston (Somerville specifically), my experience matches up with yours. I was ~5 minutes from a supermarket and ~15 minutes from the subway/train stop by foot. I was even closer to a couple bus stops for lines that would take me to places like a mall, nearby universities, or the next subway line over (we don't have an equivalent of the Circle line).

I currently live in Boston suburbs (Metrowest for people that know the area) and can't really walk anywhere as my street and adjacent streets don't have sidewalks. I could try to walk on the street, but with the narrowness combined with the speed at which people drive through this neighborhood, it would not be fun. If I hop in the car, I am ~5 minutes from a strip mall with a supermarket, pharmacy, liquor store, etc. and ~10 minutes from the commuter rail train station that I use to commute to the city for work. If I want to head to a large shopping hub with a mall, then it is ~20 minutes away by car. There is a skeleton of a bus system in my area, but it would require traversing ~1.5 miles on streets without sidewalks to get to the nearest stop for me.

When I lived in a rural area (rural PA), things were very different. To get to the nearest supermarket (a WalMart), it took ~30 minutes worth of driving. If I wanted to go to the mall, it was closer to 60 minutes. I am sure there are even less dense areas than that in this country.

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[-] stinerman@midwest.social 6 points 5 hours ago

I live in a suburban area of Columbus, Ohio.

  • To the nearest convenience store: 1.5km
  • To the nearest chain supermarket: 3.7km
  • To the bus stop: 450m (this bus runs once per hour)
  • To the nearest park: 1km
  • To the nearest library: 5.5km
  • To the nearest metro train station: 195km in Cleveland, Ohio (Columbus is the largest city in America by population that has no passenger rail service)
  • To the nearest intercity train station (Amtrak): 162km in Sandusky, Ohio (This comes through once per day at around 3 or 4 am)

You also mention you can get somewhere within 10 minutes of walking. A lot of Americans will refuse to walk that far. For many people in the country and the suburbs, the bulk of the outdoor walking they do is to/from their cars and to get the mail.

It's hard for Europeans to understand, but nearly all American cities are built around the concept that everyone has their own car and drives everywhere to get around. Even things that are 5 minute walks, Americans will get in the car and drive to. Mass transit (again in most cities) is coded as "for poor people who can't afford a car", so it's always difficult to use and is much slower than having your own car.

[-] Badabinski@kbin.earth 3 points 4 hours ago

I used Google maps to get these values. I'm using Google's estimated walking distance and will also include Google's estimated walking time.

  • Convenience store
    • Distance: 800 m
    • Time: 11 minutes
  • Chain supermarket
    • Distance: 1.1 km
    • Time: 15 minutes
  • Bus stop
    • Distance: 230 m
    • Time: 3 minutes
  • Park:
    • Distance: 450 m
    • Time: 7 minutes
  • Big supermarket (Walmart)
    • Distance: 1.7 km
    • Time: 23 minutes
  • Library
    • Distance: 2.7 km
    • Time: 37 minutes
  • Train station (local light rail)
    • Distance: 3.1 km
    • Time: 43 minutes

I'm in Utah somewhere south of Salt Lake City (the state capitol). The numbers aren't great, but they're far better than some places I've lived here. As a kid, I remember biking for 20+ minutes to make it to a small supermarket.

EDIT: as others have said, my paths can be quite bendy at times, but it's different than many suburbs in the US. Salt Lake City (and, by extension, most of the valley that it's in) is built on a fairly rigorous grid system. We have lots of straight roads with large blocks (in some cases, it can be 1-2 km between lights and crosswalks). We don't have too many ratfucked suburban mazes, so the walkability problem here is primarily due to sprawl and a dearth of crosswalks.

[-] 11111one11111@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Here are my best guesses from living life:

From house to local stores: City-Couple blocks Suburbs-3 to 10 mins Rural-10 to 45 mins

Metropolitan centers are surrounded by Suburbs which is surrounded by rural. That's sort of stat quo. The distance between Metropolitan centers (not including the retarded NYC and LA type areas) is usually a minimum 1hr from closest centers but in most states they're like 3 hrs apart.

Time it takes to go up or down the east coast is 12 to 17 hrs for most that's not the time to get from northern most tip of main to southern most tip of Florida cuz who the fuck actually does that.

Traveling an hour to do something special is common but traveling an hr for something common or necessity is designated for the extreme mountain ranges like Adirondack, Appalachian, Rocky? (Idk never been just assuming) type of areas.

Anything taking longer than an hr is getting into road trip status and anything over 3 hr is find somewhere to stay and come home tomorrow status. There are exceptions bit depending on how long event is you are adding 6hr round trip time to it.

Caveats:

Rush hour is dependent on area. For example in Buffalo a 45 min trip no traffic is taking you around 50min-1hr in rush hour. Whereas in Frederick, MD (D.C. suburb) a 15 min drive no traffic was taking at leasy 1hr in rush hour. All the same it's every single weekday from 6am to 9am and 3pm to 6pm in every Metropolitan area.

State to neighboring state trips are usually 3 to 6 hr. Usual work commute for everyone not commuting to a city (do honestly most of the US) 5 to 30 mins.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 11 points 7 hours ago

The big thing to know is that things spread out as you go from East to West.

On the East Coast, New England area, everything is pretty tightly packed. On the West Coast? Not so much.

When I was living in Eugene, Oregon, I had family visit from Sweden, so we asked them what they wanted to do.

"We want to go to Disneyland!"

OK, not saying we CAN'T, but it's 13 hours in the car assuming no traffic.

[-] TeckFire@lemmy.world 12 points 7 hours ago

At my current job, I’m about 45 minutes away by car. Car is also the only option. Before I moved closer, I was actually an hour and a half away, so 90 minutes one way, or 3 hours per day worth of driving.

It’s too expensive to live in the cities themselves, so I have to live further out and just commute.

Closest wal-mart is about 30 minutes away, but there’s smaller stores closer if I dont’t need much.

I haven’t mentioned walking/biking because there’s no point in walking where I live. There’s next to no shoulder on the road, and it’s 45MPH (72KPH) roads with mostly large pickup trucks driving on it, so it’s not safe to walk.

For reference, I live in the American south, so it’s somewhat rural.

[-] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

America is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to America.

2.2 Km to nearest chemist / convenience store.

[-] SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Found Douglas' Lemmy account. Hi, Douglas.

[-] dch82@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 hours ago

I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s

Actually, the chemist's for me is only about 350m away, next to the chain supermarket

[-] Illuminostro@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

One of my high school girlfriends had to drive 45 minutes each way to school, and home. About 36 miles. She lived in the middle of nowhere near a state park.

[-] semperverus@lemmy.world 11 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

On the west coast, it can take 8 (EDITED) hours to drive from the capital of oregon to the capital of california. Likewise, it takes about as long to get from oregon to montana. It can take 4 to 6 hours to get from the southern oregon border to the northern.

Where I live, i can walk to a little convenience store in about 10 minutes, but the nearest supermarket would be an hour walk away (10-15 minutes by car). If i were to move 10 miles in any direction, i may not have a convenience store around.

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[-] TheWeirdestCunt@lemm.ee 8 points 6 hours ago

I'm in the uk too but I'm out in the northern countryside, just to get to the village newsagents is a 15-20 minute walk and it's about 12 miles to the nearest supermarket. Even in the UK there are places where you have to drive to almost everywhere.

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[-] thesohoriots@lemmy.world 7 points 6 hours ago

I could easily walk to a grocery store in 10 minutes; however, there’s no sidewalks, no streetlights if it was dark, and I’d have to cross a road with a speed limit of 55mph. On the way I’d pass a gun store, so maybe I could pick one up and pop off a couple rounds into the air to make a temporary crosswalk.

[-] rem26_art@fedia.io 6 points 6 hours ago

It kinda depends on where you live. I live in the suburbs near a few large metropolitan areas and I do have a supermarket within a 10 minute walk of me, and a bigger supermarket a 30 min walk away, but there are definitely places where you need a car to go shopping cuz theres no sidewalks or all the roads are like 45mph+ and really only designed for car transit.

I've got family who live in Texas and they say that there's lots of places that are drive thru, like banks and dry cleaners and stuff.

I had a coworker at one of my previous jobs transfer to our US branch from the UK and he said that a lot of his friends were asking him if he was gonna visit Disney World, since he was moving to "just outside of New York City" (read: Pennsylvania, lmao) He said a lot of them were shocked to realize that its like an 18 hour drive from NYC to Disney World in Florida.

Another thing about that job, there was no realistic way for me to get to it by public transit. It was a half an hour drive, but about 3 hours of combined public transit + walking and needed me to take two trains and a bus.

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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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