To Americans: How far apart is everything in the US?
To Americans: How far apart is everything in the US?
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
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Based on the small town where I grew up:
- convenience store: 2km
- nearest chain/big supermarket: 5km
- bus stop: what bus?
- park: 10km (but there are hiking trails within 1km)
- train (metro) station: 5km
- library: 5km
- long distance train station: 20km
- my dad’s daily commute when I was growing up: 140km (that’s 140km each way, 5 days a week. 1200km of commuting each week. He did this with a combination of car, bike, and train. It took him about 3 hours each way.)
Note that a lot of the roads don’t have sidewalks so even if you want to walk it can be kinda dangerous depending on time of day.
Based on cities I’ve lived in:
- convenience store: 300m
- chain supermarket: 800m
- bus stop: 500m
- train (metro) station: 1km
- park: 1.5km
- library: 1.5km
- big supermarket: 2.5km
- long-distance train station: 2.7km
- my current commute: 3km
The cities tend to be a lot more walkable, but you still need to take the car or train to get to things like by the bigger (and cheaper) supermarket and other stores. The train is slow and unreliable (sometimes it’s faster to walk than take the train) so cars are much more popular.
This sounds about right for "normal" US towns and cities to me as well