Ask Lemmy

In my home town getting to most basic necessities took 20min driving. Mind you that was the capital city of my state

My refrigerator is annoyingly far from my desk chair.

It varies wildly depending on where you go. I think the worst-case scenario in terms of car-built cities would be someplace like Phoenix, Arizona. Visiting that city, I gained an appreciation for what it must be like to have a physical handicap that affects your mobility, because being in Phoenix without a car is comparable to having a disability. You cannot go anywhere on your own two feet in any reasonable length of time. It's the kind of place where you need to find a Walmart to buy a loaf of bread. The closest thing to a corner store is going to be a gas station.

Take a look at a population density map of the US. A lot of the places that don't light up are agricultural. If for some reason you have never seen a real farm before and always wanted to then by all means come on by, but we call them "flyover states" for a reason. All the cool tourist destinations are in the glowy bits.

I assume you were asking for tourist reasons anyway. If you were just asking for curiosity sake, it depends where you live. I live in the rural part of Illinois and it only takes 15 - 20 minutes to get to a supermarket by car, but walking there is completely out of the question. Especially with the hills. Oh God, my feet hurt just thinking about it.

Things around me aren't that far per se, but you have to cross a 45mph road (where people regularly drive 55-60 because it's designed like a highway) along several sections of unconnected sidewalk if you want to get there without a car. The sidewalks are 4ft wide at most and have no separation from the car lanes so you have to walk with cars whizzing by just a couple feet from you. There's also no shade.

For reference - it takes 5 minutes to drive to the nearest grocery store 1 mile away, but walking it's 31 minutes with the unpleasant conditions I mentioned. So I've never walked there. I could bike and it would take 10 minutes, but biking along cars at 50mph doesn't sound fun. I also live on a bike path, but it doesn't go to the nearest grocery store so the nearest one along the bike path would take the same amount of time as if I walked to the nearest one (25 minutes). That one is 3.5 miles (11min) by car or a 1hr walk.

Depends heavily where you live. Rural places can be an hour drive to the closest grocery store. For me, I live about 5 minute drive from stores and my work. But I cannot feasibly walk to where I want to go, there is zero sidewalks in my area and cars go at least 35 mph on the slow neighborhood roads and 50 mph on the busier main roads (less than 3 minute drive to get to either one). Bus and train infrastructure is basically non-existent so not an option. My only option is risk my life on a bike on the shoulder of the main road (since theres no bike lanes) and hope the weather isn't bad or I have to drive a car .

I went to College about 65 miles west of Chicago (or about 1 hour driving). One weekend some friends decided to take a road trip to Maine so one friend could confess their love to someone. They left Friday after classes ended and drove nonstop, took one hour in Maine for the friend to get shot down, and then dove back. They didn't get back until late Sunday night. That's about 1300 miles and with a few bathroom/food stops 24 hours each way.

Here in London, using a car is pain and suffering with single-digit average speeds due to intense traffic jams

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.

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

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

Depends on the place like everyone else has said.

• To the nearest convenience store: .3 mi
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 1.1 mi
• To the bus stop: .3 mi
• To the nearest park: .5 mi
• To the nearest big supermarket: 1.1 mi
• To the nearest library: .5 mi
• To the nearest train station: 30 mi

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

Depends on location, but I don’t think I’m too bad.

• To the nearest convenience store (more than that, really; a drug store and mini grocery store): 400m
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 2km
• To the bus stop: 100m (but the bus doesn’t go many places
• To the nearest park: 600m (a small park, a much larger one 2km away)
• To the nearest *big* supermarket: 6km
• To the nearest library: 2.5km
• To the nearest train station: 2km for local rail, like 25km for rare intercity trains

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

Bank: 24 miles / 38.6km Grocery store: 4 miles / 6.4 km Work: 50 miles / 70km Parents house: 703 miles / 1131 km

I need to move closer for work, but couldn't afford it do to dumb choices for a bit there.

I love in a suburb of a Midwestern state capital.

Here are my walking distances: (I'll do my best to convert distances)

• To the nearest convenience store: 3.2km
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 4km
• To the bus stop: 2.75km
• To the nearest park: 1.5km (it's a pretty decent park with a swimming/fishing pond)
• To the nearest big supermarket: 12km
• To the nearest library: 2.4km
• To the nearest train station: 10km (this isn't a commuter line, but a long distance city to city line). This is also where intracity buses are boarded.
• To State Capitol: 13 km

Of all of these, only the walk to the Capitol is shorter than the drive (by about 1.5km) due to walking paths. I've never walked it all in one go, but I have walked both halves of the trail.

Walking?

5 minutes to cafe for toast and coffee, or the closest corner store/gas station

10-15 minutes walk to the closet big grocery store, or pharmacy, better corner store/gas station, also to roller skating and bowling, a jewelry store, like 15 churches, lawyers, medical supply, doctor offices, a hospital, a bank, fast food and small independent restaurants, lots of stuff.

20-25 to work or to the good grocery

It's certainly not London!!! But if you are inside a mid-sized city there is stuff within easy walking distance, and more within short drive (5 minutes) My husband came from the suburbs and that's a different story - house farms ringed by roads too dangerous to cross, everyone drives everywhere. He used to think of "close" as anything a 15 minute drive or less! Not anymore.

83 miles from Disney World, that's probably the closest international landmark, lol. But maybe 4 miles from the beautiful Tampa Theater, which ought to be an international landmark.

It's a two-hour round trip walk to the nearest convenience store, and its also through rough terrain and lawns that people don't cut

it takes half an hour to walk (one-way) to the nearest store

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.

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.

I live in a major city

• To the nearest convenience store: 500m
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 2.7km
• To the bus stop: 400m
• To the nearest park: 1.4km
• To the nearest big supermarket: 2.7km (same one as above)
• To the nearest library: 3km
• To the nearest train station (light rail): 5.6km

Same figures for me:

• Convenience store: 2.7km
• Supermarket: 2.5km
• Bus stop: 4.2km (this may be incorrect I think there was a closer one that didn't show on the map)
• Park: 6.2km
• Big Supermarket: 3.5km
• Library: 6km
• Train station: 7.9km
• Hart Plaza(nowhere really analogous to big Ben around me): 46km

For me things were not in meters or feet but hours driven. From my home town the nearest stoplight was 1.5 hours away by car. This is also the closest chain restaurant (like McDonald's or simular). We had a school bus, but other than that no public transit. The next town over (15 minutes) has a supermarket.

I live in a newly developed area. The nearest convenience store to me is a ~10 minute drive. Also, since people only started living here a few years ago, the city has only just started paying attention to quality of life things like shade trees, so you'd be walking a good 45 minutes there and back in direct sunlight.

I fucking hate this country 🙃

Wow. I thought I lived in a pretty walkable part of Atlanta. I really only use my car for the grocery or a 'big' shopping trip.

• Convenience store 2 km
• Chain supermarket 1.5 km
• Bus stop 1.3 km
• Park 300m
• Big supermarket 2.5 km
• Library 2.7 km
• Train (subway) station 1.3 km
• Downtown Atlanta 13 km

I live in a small shithole town in Pennsylvania about an hour drive outside a major city and 15 minutes outside of a smaller city.

The liquor store a dollar store and a few tiny shops are within ~4k Big Macs(top to bottom length) away, but everywhere else needs a car. There is nothing in town other than a few small shops, everything else was closed long before my time.

It's about a 15 minute drive to get to the next town over since all the stores are there. There is no other non car transportation infrastructure near by other than county buses that you shouldn't use unarmed.

The nearest landmark of any cultural significance (outside of going into the city) is the empty field in Somerset county a few hours away.

Basically if I want something other than whiskey or bread, it's a 15 minute drive. Still better than when I was still living with my parents because they were even further out from civilization.

Getting to the next closest state is about a 3 hours trip and I'm close to the border.