1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
I live in New York (city):
Distances seem about the same in my small US town.
No train.
Little further to Big Ben, i think.
I live in rural Ohio and I drive about 40 miles (65 km) round trip a day just getting to and from work, and that's pretty average for a rural area.
The nearest grocery store and back is about a 15 mile (25 km) round trip.
In the rural areas, which account for most of the land area of the US, things are far enough apart that it makes it impossible to survive without a vehicle.
Living in a small town in central North Carolina (answering these questions in units of city blocks that are ~150 meters long or in statute miles:
To the nearest convenience store: 4 blocks
To the nearest chain supermarket: 2 miles
To the bus stop: ~35 miles (It's a distance to the nearest town with a bus service)
To the nearest park: 8 or 9 blocks
To the nearest BIG supermarket: 2.5 miles. The "nearest chain supermarket" is a Food Lion; slightly farther down the road is a Wal-Mart and a Harris Teeter about the same distance away.
To the nearest library: 3 blocks
To the nearest train station: 4 blocks.
Straight-line distance to Big Ben: ~4000 miles. juuuust out of earshot. I don't recommend walking.
I live in a walkable neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia. I have grocery stores in walking distance but usually drive to nicer ones for big hauls. I drive to the gym. I could bike there but there’s no bike lanes and steep hills. Everything else on your list is just a few blocks away.
I live in the suburbs of a decently sized but not super large city in WI.
Just to give the other side. I live in a big city in the US.
Convenience store: .2 miles, 320 meters
Chain supermarket: .5 miles, 800 meters
Bus stop: 300 feet, 90 meters
Park: 0.2 miles, 320 meters
Big supermarket: 0.4 miles, 640 meters
Library: 0.9 miles, 1.4 kilometers
Train Station: 0.3 miles, 480 meters
Straight-line distance to Golden Gate Bridge: 11.6km
It is fucked here unless you own property already in the good parts or you are upper class income and can move your ass into the good parts despite the obsene costs.
It isn't just that things are too far to walk, it's that American car companies have made it part of our culture to own and drive, and it's unpatriotic to do otherwise. That causes a severe lack of public transportation and sidewalks and bike lanes. So because of all this, I have to drive a mile through my neighborhood to get to a 7-Eleven that would be a quarter mile if I walked.
I live in a semi rural area. My closest grocery store is 10km, but it's down the interstate, meaning even if I wanted to walk it, I couldn't. Without using the interstate it's about 15km.
My closest convenience store is only 7km, but the road i live on is not safe for walking (lots of blind curves, no sidewalks)
My nearest bus stop is 60 kilometers away, in my nearest city.
Nearest library is about 4 km past the convenience store, so 11ish klicks
Nearest train station is give or take 300 kilometers. We don't really have any train service here.
Straight line distance from me to big Ben, give or take 6,500 kilometers
I'll chime in since I'm in Canada, which is sadly just US delayed by 20 years.
I can walk to a convenience store with high prices in about 5 minutes or 360 metres and little else. It's all residential beyond there until a 25 minute walk or greater and everything is spread out. The main shopping centres you might want to walk around are an hour walk away. To reach the store I actually shop at for reasonable prices, it's a 12 minute drive or a 7400 metre walk (a miserable one with spotty sidewalks)... just for fun, it's about 45m by bus BEST CASE but realistically you will take an hour unless you hit the exact right bus at the exact moment it pulls up.
But that varies.
Here it's < 100m to the food shopping, pharmacy, post office, Amazon pickup, pros like dentist and barber and a hospital, separate medical test office, some medical specialists, as well as two gyms and a daycare. Hopping the train gets me to one of two biiig malls in about 5 or 20 min. 200m out is a plethora of doctors and specialists, 2 coffee/snack shops, and 2 of the 5 pizza places nearby. Go the km and you'll pass the Starbucks, sandwiches, park, church, more takeout, and 7-11.
We're designed for no-car though. Inasmuch as many Canadian cities still need a car, and while I'm cheating by working 100% remote since CoViD, I haven't driven a car in about a year. This is a special island of accessibility, which they're trying to put around all the train stations and experiment with more walking.
But distances are still crazy for visitors. People land in Toronto and ask "can we take a day trip to Banff?" Not realizing it could be 71 hours of driving to get there.
Travelling to see my family via ferry is a 5-6 hour 100km trip if I optimize it, since it's so inefficient. airplanes cost as much as 120 Starbucks medium frothy hot drinks for the 50km air portion of the trip round-trip, per person, so we avoid that option.
Our little pet island on the west coast, for instance, where we have some quaint buildings and such, is almost 500km long -- which could be the distance almost from dover to Scotland if I believe my AI pothead.
This land mass is huge. You have no idea.
I live in NYC. It's one of the few large places in the US that's dense and not completely car focused.
Convenience store: 5 minute walk to several
Supermarket: several within 10 minute walk
Pharmacy: several within 10 minutes on foot
Library: I think there's two within 10-15 minutes walking
Restaurants: several within 10 minutes on foot
Subway: about 5 minute walk. There's also a bus stop there.
Very large park: 15 minutes or so
I never want to live somewhere where I need a car again. Someone I was talking to at a party the other day was like "I love having my car it's so much freedom" and I'm like aside from needing to fuel, maintain, insure, and store it I guess.
Nashville TN suburbs and here are my walking distances:
To the nearest convenience store: 6km
To the nearest chain supermarket: 11km
To the bus stop: 6km
To the nearest park: 4.1km
To the nearest big supermarket: 12km
To the nearest library: 13km
To the nearest train station: 25km
Having a small market so close is a massive improvement from my previous address, where the only option was a big supermarket 3.9km away.
Let's give it a shot. I live in the suburbs of Lincoln, Nebraska, which is an average-sized college town in the US (about 300k residents):
Nearest grocery store is a little over 3 miles. Libraries about four and a half miles. Nearest passenger train is about 200 miles away. I think there's a bus stop about half a mile away but I don't know if it's a full-service one.
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.
Highly dependent on where you live. Some places are very sparse, others are pretty dense.
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
Depends on the place like everyone else has said.
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 .
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.
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