One way, the nearest plaza to me is a 7 minute drive. There's nothing closer than this plaza.

The route Google Maps suggests walking is 44 minutes. There are no sidewalks. There are two roundabouts, one mini, where drivers aren't even really sure whose turn it is.

It isn't a relaxing experience by any stretch of the imagination, especially if I wanted to bring my kids.

It's not that I'm unwilling. I want to walk more. I just don't have 1h30m to dedicate to the most basic of trips.

Yeah, this is why we need to redesign our streets. Even distances that are easily bikeable are currently made effectively impassable for most people outside of a car, and there’s no reason it should be that way.

If it’s a 44 minute walk I’d guesstimate that’d be 20 minutes at a leisurely pace on a bike, or 15 if you’re quick on a road bike (or still leisurely on an e-bike).

I feel you in regards to transporting your kids - or anything else for that matter. Walking and public transit is great but what about buying groceries or anything even slightly more to carry? It seems to me people often overlook the "payload capacity" needed for transit, we're not all just commuting to work all the time.

A car is overkill for carrying most things day-to-day if you don’t live in an area built solely around cars.

Walk to any Costco in NYC and you’ll see plenty of people doing just fine with 50+lbs of groceries and a shopping cart.

Alternatively, go to any suburban grocery store and you’ll see people driving away in massive pickup trucks and SUVs having only picked up a gallon of milk.

> A car is overkill for carrying most things day-to-day if you don’t live in an area built solely around cars.

> you’ll see people driving away in massive pickup trucks and SUVs having only picked up a gallon of milk

It's not about need. Most of those people didn't choose the massive truck or SUV because that was the most sensible vehicle for them. They bought it because they like it.

Even if they don't strictly need to drive their truck to the store, they still will because they like driving it. It's not a wildly different mindset from people who buy the latest and greatest phone every year or spend thousands on a wristwatch that keeps time worse than a $20 digital watch you buy in a drug store.

I've lived in cities and depended on public transportation when I was younger and now I'm out in the 'burbs. Right now, the suburbs is where I want to be. My quality of life is higher. If I had a self-driving car, I'd move even further out of the city.

I’m not sure why you only partially quoted me and then restated what I had been replying to

Do some people drive because they like it? Yes

Do some people drive because it’s required to do anything based off of a car-centric environment? Yes

I can answer this question as someone currently living in a pretty walkable city. Most of the time I just stop by the grocery store on my way to or from somewhere else and pick up a few things. City grocery stores tend to have pretty short lines because a lot of other people are doing the same, so you don’t have to wait for 5 people to empty a full cart in front of you. (The exception being Whole Foods somehow, I think the fact that it has a giant parking garage catering to drivers has something to do with it.)

If I do need to make a larger trip, I bring a folding wagon. It’s less convenient than just stopping by on my way home from something else but there are two full grocery stores within a 5 minute walk of home so it’s no big deal. Same as before, minimal lines.

I’m about to move to the suburbs where the nearest large grocery store will be a 7-minute bike away, so I’m planning to get a front-loader cargo bike like the Urban Arrow: https://na.urbanarrow.com/family-bikes/

…though while it is that short of a trip taking a direct route, that route seems somewhat inhospitable outside of a car, so in practice I might have to take some long detours. The town’s supposedly planning to put in bicycle infrastructure at some point, but I think that’ll be my rallying cry once I move there. :)

If nobody asks, a sidewalk will never be installed. It might be worth figuring out how to ask your city to install a sidewalk. In the city of Austin, a lot of the work is driven by ADA compliance.

They put in about 2km of parking stones with reflective indicators - the flexible kind. Couldn't even be bothered to add a curb.

Took them a year to do it, too.

I guess it's better than a painted line.

The number of cars in very walkable cities (e.g. Tokyo) is underestimated also, but the fact remains that if the infrastructure is there people will use it. It's convenient. As it stands, being without a car is not very convenient in many places in N.A.

People liking their cars is why we're going to have a climate catastrophe.

And public transit is not feasible as long as cities are designed for cars. Train lines just don't scale when things are too spread out. Public transit only works when lots of people are going between the same two points. Public ride-share? You mean taxis? That's not feasible at all; we can't afford to give everyone a private chauffeur.