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

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    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

    • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
      0·
      3 months ago

      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.

      • frezik@midwest.social
        0·
        3 months ago

        To piggy back off this comment, I’m surprised the streetcars in Kenosha, WI don’t get brought up much for what we could have:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcars_in_Kenosha,_Wisconsin

        It began in June 2000. It was done by doing the municipal equivalent of looking for deals on Craigslist; they bought old cars from larger cities and did a little conversion to get the track gauge right.

        Can every small town do this? As it stands, probably not. It depends on larger cities having hand-me-down trolleys, and there just aren’t enough cities doing that for it to work on a widespread basis. But I think it does show that there’s a path to doing this in North American small cities if larger cities can get their shit together.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        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?

          • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
            0·
            3 months ago

            You took that out of context.

            That was intended to mean, as I said, in a modern context. As in you cannot get there via public transportation today. This conversation has nothing to do implementing transportation, this has to do with what we have and how accessible smaller towns are.

            So were you looking to be angry or something?