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
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the suburbs of a middle-sized city in Ohio, USA. So midwest, but a bit older, higher-density, and more northeastern suburban layout than, say, Iowa. Built up in the 1960s-70s. Almost all single-family suburban homes on large lots.
(these are walking distances, not straight lines)
- To the nearest convenience store: 1.6 km
- To the nearest chain supermarket: 4.2 km
- To the bus stop: 1.5 km
- To the nearest park: 226 meters
- To the nearest big supermarket: 2.1 km
- To the nearest library: 2.6 km
- To the nearest train station: Hahaha! (Ok, it’s actually 78 km, but it’s mostly worthless as a train station)
Straight-line distance to Big Ben: 6297 km
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
That was an interesting read. Are you aware of any cities or towns which are built in a more European style with pedestrians in mind? I’m actually considering a few jobs in the states right now but I’m quite put off by how car reliant everything is.
Oh man, those are the hard questions. The short answer - no. You’re not going to find anything in the US even remotely close. What you’re going to want to look for is transit usage. How often and easily do people take transit? Here’s a helpful map for you to see how people get to work.
There is one and only one city that I could consider “close” to European cities in terms of being able to be as pedestrian as Europe, and that’s New York. There are others that are close and have decent transit. Chicago has the CTA and is relatively good if you live near the city center. Philly I hear has decent transit, again try to live near a stop rather than the suburbs. I’m in Seattle, and our transit system is growing rapidly - but most trips still require a car. We’re looking at going from a 2 car household down to a 1 car - but the system has to expand. (Even then it’s only 2 light rail lines and then bus).
Here’s a good video for you on Houston from NotJustBikes on Houston, and what it’s like to live there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54
Boston and New York are probably the closest to European cities with respect to transit that you will find in the States. Plenty of people live in those cities without cars. I lived in Boston for a long time (now in the Boston suburbs) and plenty of adults I know there haven’t even bothered getting their driver’s license.
The other Northeast Corridor cities are probably the next tier down. DC has decent transit if you make live and work near transit stops. Philadelphia can work, but SEPTA has been unreliable at best in my personal experience. I haven’t really spent much time in Baltimore to be able to say.
Outside of the Northeast Corridor, the only other option really would be the San Francisco bay area with its BART system. It has decent coverage and I have family that lives in the area and enjoys it. However, I don’t have much firsthand experience with it.
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
The average American thinks that if roads are too dangerous for bikers, then bikers shouldn’t be allowed to drive on them. This is preferable to reducing the speed limit…that people will ignore anyway.
I don’t know who did it, but there was a list of cities in the US with the amount of space used for car parking. I think Tulsa, OK was something like 2/3rds of their downtown land was devoted to parking.
My closest superstore an hour drive away. 60 miles. The closest grocer is 12 miles. My closest international airport is 1.5 hours away. It is also the closest regional airport. 85 miles. The closest national park is 3 hours. I live 6 miles from my closest town.
There are no passenger trains, busses, or taxis. Or uber.
Rural america is empty. And spread out. We get along fine, but public transit will never exist here. Cars are the only way.
Yep. I live the same life in a very rural and somewhat remote area also. Population density is very low making modern conveniences non-existent and not ever likely to exist in such places.
Other things to consider: Kids often ride a school bus for an hour or more to and from school. Nearest hospital is 40 miles away. And it’s a Level 3. This means it’s pretty much a bandaid station. I used to work as a medic up here. The number of times I had to literally turn the lights on in the ER and wait for the doctor to get out of bed and drive to the hospital would shock you. Nearest ambulance is 20 miles away and you better hope they aren’t already busy when you dial 911. Because if they are, it could be several hours before they can get to you. The US Postal Service will NOT deliver mail to my home. I need to pay $160 a year for a post office box, (no free delivery for me!), and drive the 12 mile round trip to town, (Pop: 150), just to get my mail.
The railway used to be the default for rural areas. It could be again.
So how does rail solve the Last Mile problem? It does no good to say “take the train” if the nearest train station is 60 miles away. And is it the best use of a train to run tracks to a town/village with a population 150 people or less?
Light rail and buses? Even the most remote rural towns in Japan have small shuttle buses that serve even the sparsest areas. The great thing about public transit is that it is actually scalable if there’s political will to make it happen. A shuttle bus can connect a rural neighborhood to a big train station within 60 minutes. The cool factor of transit is mix and matching several types of transport to cover the most area with the highest mobility for the widest array of people.
Japan still has a higher density of population and far less landmass to cover. My nearest neighbor is over a mile away. Are you going to build a bus route or light rail just for me? Or through county, state, and federal forest lands? Logistics is a bitch.
Depends.
If you live in a very rural area it can be more than an hour by car to some of these things, 50 miles or more, other items may not exist at all like public transportation. Inter-city public transportation is all but imposable for smaller locations, difficult and lengthy the greater the distance and size differential in locations.
I used to live in a metro area. Everything was within 10 minutes walk except medical care, but walking to the subway would get you to top tier medical facilities in about 15-20 minutes. Getting to nearby “bedroom” communities was also pretty easy thanks to a commuter rail.
I now live in a suburban area that has OK bus service but it’s not very convenient to where I live at all. Everything is within a 10 minute drive, and unfortunately a car is necessary due to the lack of sidewalks in many places. It does have light rail to a major metro area, about two hour’s ride, and then you can access the metro area major transportation network to all nearby areas and further away. Probably about as good as it gets in the US.
Nearest store of any kind - 1 mile
Full serve store - same
Library - .75 mile
Bus stop - 1.2 miles
Small park - .5 miles
Large park - 3 miles
Access to light rail - 4 miles
Knock off this “public transportation is only for big cities” propaganda bullshit. The US literally had a comprehensive rail network. The town of 1000 I used to live in had a train that connected to anywhere in the nation in the 1930s.
I really don’t know what you’re on about. I stated what we have today. Period. My comment has nothing to do with “propaganda” or rail history in the US. Did you even reply to the right comment?
Did you read your comment?
Inter-city public transportation is all but imposable for smaller locations
Just for fun, I decided to check my distances against yours
Here are my walking distances:
- To the nearest convenience store: 1.13km
- To the nearest chain supermarket: 2.74km
- To the bus stop: 33.8km
- To the nearest park: 2.41km
- To the nearest *big* supermarket: 17.7km
- To the nearest library: 2.41km
- To the nearest train station: 24.14km
- Straight-line distance to Nashville’s “The Batman Building” (closest approximation to a large unique cityscape building): 67.76km
- To the bus stop: 33.8km
Is that a typo, or can you just randomly stand at the side of the road and flag down a bus so you don’t need as many formal bus stops?
Because that’s wild.
Haha
I live in New York (city):
- Convince store: several within 1-2 blocks
- Grocery store: 1 block away
- Train station: 3 blocks away
- Park: less than a block
- Library: Very short train ride (4 stops) and a bit of walking (15 minutes) (there is a closer one but that requires a bus and considering New York traffic busses aren’t the best).
- Statue of Liberty: Roughly 2 hours by train
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.
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 14 to 16 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.
Salem to Sacramento shouldn’t take that long unless there is gnarly traffic. As a kid, my family regularly did San Jose to Seattle in 16 hours.
Salem’s not at the northern border. You still have the distance of portland to go, or at least driving around it, and even that can take a while.
From border to border, Organic Maps estimates 5 hours and 20 minutes, which does not include traffic.
I did run the calculation from salem to sacramento though, and i was off by about double. Its 16 hours to southern california (ive done the drive), but to sacramento, its only 8. I own that mistake, I don’t travel to california much and mistook the trip I took for the distance i was thinking about.
250 m to the nearest mini market
400 to the nearest mini mall
1k to the railroad station
400 to the park
150 to the (unreliable) bus stop
Sorry bro what is m? 😂
About 3 and a bit feet
EDIT: Didn’t see above comment sorry
I figured the 😂 emoji would convey me being silly 🤷♂️
1 m is approximately 3 ft
I figured the 😂 emoji would convey me being silly 🤷♂️
I laughed but I also figured some people probably don’t know the general conversion is that easy. I’m not sure who’s so salty they down voted you.
I’m pretty sure a meter is a few inches longer than a yard
So like half a banana
