Walk? No. I would cycle there. Get some bike bags so you can bring some books back.
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2025
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Yes that makes sense. Good to know it's not a common walking length for everyday. I thought I was being lazy not wanting to make the trip on foot. I'll be two and a half hours walking for a 45 minute meeting ..
I wish cars didn't rule everything here
A walkable environment also means good public transport.
I live somewhere that absolutely should be walkable and it isn't. No local public transport, not a single bike lane.
It's really frustrating. Last time I tried to walk to the store, a 15 minute walk, not counting waiting for the crosswalk light at the 5 lane, four way intersection, my son and I almost got hit by a car when we had the walk signal. It is smelly, loud, dirty, and outright hostile to pedestrians. It's even dangerous for the cars, that intersection is a race track, and there are accidents there all the time. That's what I must cross to make my way, two miles, to downtown. I really want walkability.
Anyway, meeting I had to walk for, was able to make it virtual.
I don't want to live like this. It's not human.
I asked here, because I thought I was being lazy not wanting to make this journey. I'm glad to confirm, I'm not, and it is not common to walk this length.
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Not really.
I may do a walk like that if I incorporate the walk as a leisure. But if I have to just be in a place I won't be walking more than 30-40 minutes to get to it if there's a fastest more convenient way.
In general no
However, a sunny Sunday, walking 1h to do something may be part of the fun.
For distance above roughly a km, I use bicycle or even bus/train
That's biking distance boss
As a long time (former) NYer, my maximum walk length is about 20m. Anything further than that and I'm taking public transit. The exception is when it's a nice day out and I want to walk, in which case it's just until I get tired
Depends on the weather but probably not. I would walk an hour to a concert, to keep from having to park the car, but library, no. 2 miles doesn't seem like it should take that long though - 2 miles is the distance kids have to have between their house and the school before the school bus will get them, so I had to walk that twice a day for 7 years of my youth, it didn't take an hour.
I wouldn't walk any distance for a library.
But even it was a place I actually wanted to go, 10 minutes walking distance is about the maximum. For anything more there has to be a tram (or at least a bus).
Everyone has their own definition of “walkable”. For me that’s not, plus it’s getting to the point where the books i’d likely get would be annoying to carry. But also do you mean literally walkable or “don’t need a car”. The latter includes transit and micromobility
I walk to my library but it’s less than ten minutes. Especially since they put up parking meters, walking ten minutes is more convenient than finding change or feeding a profiteering app company.
Unfortunately the best part of my towns downtown is a mile away so less convenient. Most of the time I’ve lived here I’ve decided to drive the mile but since pandemic I’ve been far more likely to walk. I recently went to a diner where a newly opened trail made it a nice walk despite it being over a mile.
And the definition of walkable changes over time as well. As a young adult I lived in Boston and considered essentially everything walkable. While I was also a big user of transit, they tended to be too slow and crowded when you can walk instead. Most of my driving was to move my car for street cleaning or snow removal
We do that few times a year but bike is designed for these distances
I am from Denmark where the biking infrastructure is also pretty good, so I will almost always take the bike if I'm going somewhere that is further than 1 km away (~.6 miles).
But that is just if I'm going somewhere -- taking a 4 km walk just for the sake of the walk and getting some fresh air (especially when the weather is nice) is quite normal here.
If it's free time and I don't have any appointments yes. If I have to be there regularly and as appointmemt, I would use public transport on the way there and walk the way back.
These answers are great. I thought so. Folks mentioned bikes. I didn't think about the bike, there isn't biking infrastructure in place, and mines been broke in the shed for years. But yeah that would probably be the best way in my situation, if I didn't have to cross like 5 death traps to use it. The public transport comments make me laugh. I wish.
Don't forget that scooters are also popular these days, both electric and non-electric. They need less infrastructure and are cheaper than bikes, but please wear a fucking helmet. Roller blades depending on the surface or even Skateboarding can also be used to cut the time/effort.
If that’s the round trip, yes. I do that daily. But one way? No.
No, but walkable places would probably have public transport access as well? If so I'd take the bus. I think I generally consider 15-20 minutes to be "walkable" if I need to go often (train/metro stations, grocery stores). For the occasional trips I'd consider 1 hour walk one way. Anything longer I would probably skip or find alternative ways to get there (including taxis/ride shares)
I can, and have in the past, it's not that big of a deal, but it's not something I do regularly. Here's the thing, 4km takes about 1h walking, 30min by bus/tram, 20min by car (then another 10min finding a place to park), or 15min by bike. This is why bikes are so ubiquitous in European cities, you can get to places usually much faster than by public transport, and sometimes even faster than cars since they have to do weird paths and skip entire neighborhoods.
I normally would take public transport for such distances, mostly because I don't own a bike and sweat more than I'm comfortable with when I ride one, and don't mind the extra 15min of listening to music.
That's too much for walking. I would take a bike in that case.
Here's what I consider common:
- Walk 10 minutes to the train station
- Get to the city center while scrolling Lemmy on your phone.
- Walk in the center to visit some fancy stores. Maybe like 15-20 minutes in one direction.
- Buy some specialty coffee, fancy kitchen knives, Bialetti rubber rings or whatever.
- Walk back to the station: 15-20 minutes.
- Battery is nearly dead, and I forgot to bring a charger with me. I guess I'll just stare out the window.
- Walk back home: 10 min.
In total, that's going to be like an hour, but it's divided into multiple parts. Walking that much in just one direction is something I would prefer to avoid. If the library is a 60 min walk away, that's the same as like 12 bus stops or 15 minutes while sitting in a bus. BTW that 15 minutes includes walking at both ends of the journey. I would definitely choose public transport over walking in that case.
If the destination is just 15 minutes walk away from your house, that's perfectly normal, and not a problem in any way. If it's like 20 minutes away, I would begin to consider using a bike or maybe even a bus.
I’m in pretty much the same boat as you
0-20 minutes is usually walking or up to about 1mi/1.6km After that I usually consider biking up to around 5mi/8km If biking isn’t good due to terrain/parking/activity or any further I would generally rather take some form of public transit
Alas I live in the U.S. in a non pedestrian friendly area now and the majority of the time the only real option is driving
I've spent some time in a few different environments in Europe. In the city, the walking rule applies, and public transport works well. You don't really need a car unless you buy ikea furniture frequently. The larger the city, the more you end up hating your car.
In small towns, the focus shifts towards walking, bicycling and driving your own car. Busses might exist, but just barely. Not something you would consider unless you're completely out of options. If you live close to the town center, you can walk or bike nearly everywhere, but you usually still need a car for certain things. That's not really a problem because parking is free and always available everywhere.
If you're in a more rural environment, walking is no longer an option, because everything is at least 5 km (about an hour walk) away, usually more like 20-50 km away. Bicycling is an option, but there are no bike lanes. That's usually not a huge problem since there's hardly any traffic to bother you. The locals seem to enjoy F1 and rally though, so bare that in mind. Oh, and the wildlife is actively looking for ways to commit suicide using your car, so keep your eyes open while driving.
So, how is it on the other side of the puddle? I've heard all sorts of wild things, and I get the feeling that it's really different from what I've experienced here.
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
By the way, count the actual time it took you to walk that. From personal experience, Google Maps always says a considerably higher number
Thats fair. Honestly its less about the time, and more about how hostile the first half the journey is. I used to live in a place that was urban, I felt lazy not wanting to make this trip, just another "stupid lazy American" ya know. Confirmed here it's not normal to walk an hour to a destination as an everyday task, even though I have done walks prior daily, I'm not so young anymore.
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Probably not. And no, I've done maybe an hour, but more likely 45 minutes to a library in a car centric city, and now somewhere with public transit I don't think you're ever more than a half hour walk from one
This is part of why I'm so vocal about increasing walkability. There's a cascading effect with increasing walkability as more and more is easily walkable less people need cars and there's more demand for walkability and mass transit solutions.
The fact that I've lived in cities (including major ones) where the public transit is a bus that comes every hour and I've lived where it's faster to take the train to go to a lot of places. If transit sucks, only the poor take it. In many places the bus is treated as welfare not mass transit. It can't improve until the area is willing to invest in distant returns. Not investing however will eventually hit growing urban areas with worse and worse conditions and traffic
No. I would walk ~5-20 minutes to a bus/train station that would take me there.
Edit: for < 4km I would walk. Why does Google think that would be such a long journey in terms of time (which my first response was based upon)
Yes. I would but no it would not take that long. I walked to and from work 3 miles for awhile and it was about 45 mins. A neat thing with walking is that the time is very consistant. If I walked pretty much as fast as I could and was lucky on street lights and such I could almost make it in 35 minutes but if I took my sweet ass time it was hard to get to an hour. If I was taking one hour and 15minutes I should be able to get to a library that was 5 miles away. I have regularly walked to my current library in recent times and its about a mile and a half away but I have not really kept track of how long it takes me.
In NYC everything is within like a 15 minute walk, including the library
2.3 miles wouldn't take me an hour and 15 min. More like 45 min one way, walking 3.5 - 4 mph.
I would not walk that regularly for the library. I would bike or more likely drive due to time, weather, and some roads between my home and the library not really being suitable to walk/bike safely the whole way. My immediate neighborhood is bike/walk friendly, but as I go out 1 - 2 miles and further, they are very much car roads not built with cyclists and pedestrians in mind.
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If you ride a bike it would only be about 15 min each way.
If the library is the all day activity then sure! Great start and end to it.
In my city, there are enough libraries that few if any residents are that far from one (I’m a block away from one myself).
In theory, I’d walk that far if the library had a rare book or something else unique I wanted to see; but if I just wanted a place to read I’d go to a café, and if I wanted a generally-available book I’d go to a bookstore. (I figure most books worth walking that far for are worth owning.)
Nah that's too much. Most I did regularly was going to a big mall, 2km away, about 25min walk
Grew up in a small town, the library was about 15 minutes walk. Used to go there three times a week. I miss those days.
Maybe? Does seem a bit much. I already walk about 40 mins to get to work and that's at the higher end of what most people would walk.
But I would maybe do it if there were other things near that library that I need to go to. Have multiple destinations in mind for a longer walk like that.
EDIT: The library by me is about a 5 minute walk for what it's worth. Same for groceries & other stuff.
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Today, my longest walk was 6.8 km. Took about 2 hours, but I had frequent stops as I was collecting kids from their schools and taking them to their respective sports clubs. When I have to go to the office, I run commute, 8 km each way. My watch says that my average step count for the past 7 days is 20,109 per day. I may be an extreme case, but walking 3.7 km to the library would be so routine I wouldn't even think of taking a bus.
I live in a walkable European city.
My nearest library is 5 minutes away, there's a bigger library maybe 20 minutes away, and for anything further I'd take public transport.
Nope. That’s would be about the whole of my daily free time just walking over there and back. As I’m aging time is becoming the absolute scarce resource :-(
No, and my closest library is closer to 15 minutes away.
If it's a nice library sure
Very much depends on my motivation, my schedule and the weather. Walking much more than half an hour feels like a fair distance, and if it's unpleasant weather then I'd be tempted to take a bus or train partway.
But if it's nice weather and I've got plenty of time, walking an hour to go to a museum or whatever would seem perfectly normal.
I live in the US and even my walk to the library isn't that bad. Ive done walks that long or a bit longer as a novelty or to get exercise, but in general no, about half an hour is about as long as I "normally" like to go without looking into a bus or something.