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
I live in DFW, a large amalgamation of two cities and a bunch if suburban sprawl in Texas.
I live in a neighborhood that is considered extremely walkable, as I am directly across the street from a university and less than a mile from city hall.
Here are my walking distances:
- To the nearest convenience store: 1.8km
- To the nearest chain supermarket: 4.3 km (They have a monopoly though, so unless you can afford whole foods, the closest good one is like 22.5 km)
- To the bus stop: Lol, we don’t have busses. A neighboring city does, so I guess 29 km?
- To the nearest park: Nearest park is 2.8km. Nearest public space is only 1.5km because I live right next to city hall.
- To the nearest big supermarket: 8.9 km to Walmart.
- To the nearest library: 1.5km, again, I live right next to city hall.
- To the nearest train station: 16km, unless you mean one for intercity travel. We don’t have one of those because Amtrak is slowly being killed.
Straight-line distance to Big Ben: we don’t have a Big Ben, but we killed JFK and that’s 34km away.
Bonus fun fact, I commute 42km each day. This is considered far by most people here, 32km would be much more reasonable.
To reiterate how bad public transit is, even in populated areas: I’m also in DFW. This is my daily commute…
It’s ~9.6km. Note that the bus/train option is entirely greyed out, because there is no public transit which runs from my house to my job. If I were to walk, the only option would be on the side of a highway. I would have cars passing me at ~70 MPH without even a curb for protection.
To walk to the nearest grocery store, it’s ~4km, with a large part of it along the shoulder of that same highway. Same with a major chain.
Nearest bus stop is ~6.9km, but that only takes me in a direction I wouldn’t need to go; There are no local bus or train stops that land me near where I work or live.
