Is that amount of time common to walk in places in the world where cars don’t dictate the layout of the community?
Im going to be making this walk tomorrow, no worries, I’m just curious if its normal in other places. Maps says its 1hour15minues for 2.3miles or 3.7Km.
3.7Km
It is more like 40-50 minutes if you’re in the town with actual roads, not just a corn field.
would you walk an hour and 15 minutes to go to say, the library?
Walking more than an hour just to get to one place? No, unless walking is a sub-goal. You know, the weather is nice, no tasks for today…
Would I? Depends on the day, the weather, the mood.
Would I regularly? No, I would either take public transport or the bike.
Would I need to? Also no, I live in a mid-sized city with many libraries and the closest one is 20 minutes walk away, the main one is some half an hour walk away in another direction. Access to municipal facilities was a key element in my decision of where to live.
I think that, because cars didn’t dictate the layout, things ended up being naturally closer by, such that long walks would be fairly unusual within the city.
Heck I live in a moderately sized town and the library is a 10-15 minute walk away.
A reasonable amount of time would be 15min-30min
Longer than that there needs to be transit
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.
Where I live there are neither. The roads are not walkable, and there is no public transport. I would be happy if they were walkable. I’ll never see buses here as long as I live. They are separate things.
That’s weird reasoning. Why would walkable mean there’s busses?
For me walkable means that you don’t need to own a vehicle from going from point A to B and pedestrians are not an afterthought.
For my daily commute or to meet my friends it’s faster/comfortable to walk to the metro station or bus stop than picking the car.
For me walkable means that you don’t need to own a vehicle from going from point A to B and pedestrians are not an afterthought.
“Walkable” is a very bad description of your vision in that case. :) Anti-car would be more correct, no?
I know a lot of ways to shape an environment so that you do not need a vehicle, yet it’s not walkable neither.
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
Walkable means all you need is in reasonable walking distance.
I wouldn’t consider my neighbourhood to be particularly walkable as it’s a suburb (in Europe) but my library is about 15 mins walk away.
Sometimes the amenity you need isn’t in that walkable range, but cycling is a great alternative.
Walk? No. I would cycle there. Get some bike bags so you can bring some books back.
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
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
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)
A walkable city has libraries in every alternate neighborhood. So one is generally at most 1~1.5km away. But anything more than ~800m, I’m taking the bus anyway.
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.
What kind of path takes 75min for 3.7km? In a normal environment, this should be doable in 40 minutes.
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
I’d bike it. 2.3 miles should only be a 45 minute walk for a normal person unless there’s bad stop lights (assume ~20 minute miles). On a bike it’s less than 15
