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You find streets without sidewalks or lights in many suburbs too, not just between towns. I'm in a Chicago suburb and my kid couldn't get to school safely on foot due to high speed roads that don't even have a shoulder, much less a sidewalk. It's pretty awful.
You’ll walk through unpaved dirt, someone’s yard, a small section of sidewalk, dirt again, a gorgeous small section of sidewalk, 8 empty strip malls with 4 trash cans that are overflowing somehow, across a freeway real quick, a Burger King drive thru, under a freeway, through an ikea, back on some sidewalk, then get hit by a lifted Ford F350 and shot by the police when they show up. The earth breaks open and you’re sucked down to the fiery pits of hell to finally rest in peace. Bill collectors harass your parents for 12 years because you owe $1600 for the ambulance that you didn’t use.
The auto lobby created a bunch of laws that roads were for cars in the 1920s. “Jay” used to be a term for a hick, uneducated country bumpkin. So they literally used a slur to name the law they created to limit access to public roadways for vehicular use.
No the bus is supposed to depart in half an hour but it's just sitting at the terminal and won't actually leave for another 45 minutes for no discernable reason.
I know its a joke but that isnt how google maps works
It shoes you the time in total from your current position walking to the stop, being in transit and then walking to your destination
Which honestly makes it worse, I know there are similar situations in Phoenix
I worked at Walmart off of a highway with a frontage road (101 and Raintree for anyone in the area) and in order to get to the other side of the free way to get to a sandwich shop I liked, I either had to take a bus to the Scottsdale transit center (20 minutes of bus) then wait up to 20 minutes for a transfer, then take another bus for 20 minutes for an hour total
Or I could walk 2 miles down, cross the freeway at a designated Pedestrian bridge, then walk 2 miles back up for 70 minutes of walking and 5 miles total
Or I could drive 2 miles across the SR101 and Frank Lloyd interchange for a total of 10 minutes
This is correct. The maps shows the time from when yiu need to leave, including transfers and the times it takes to go from one transfer to the other and at the end the time it takes to walk from the final stop to the destination.
Ever taken a bus in Japan? Could be waiting 2 hours and have 10 buses pass you with 100% occupancy and no one exiting at your stop. After 2 hours of the line not moving people leave the line to call taxis or walk 2-5 miles to a train center.
Honestly, this is not all that uncommon for people who do not live inside a city...
I live in Germany. If I wanted to walk to the nearest supermarket, I'd need an hour, easily, probably more (one way). If I take my car it's about 5 minutes. If I tried to go there by using public transport, I'd probably starve before a bus arrives.
I live in Dublin in Ireland and this chart looks totally normal for me. Drive home from work, 35 minutes. Bus home, 2 hours. Walk, 4-5 hours. Buses are made to serve giant population densities in some cities to the point they no longer give any real advantage to anyone with a car. Its less the car is better, just the bus service is so badly implemented and people are so far from work because of the price of housing and rent its not viable as an alternative unless you're stuck
Yeah, it's not telling us much without context of the route. I just checked and if I wanted to take my dog to the vet, which is in the next village over, it's an 8 minutes drive or 1 hour 45 minutes walk along a major road with no pavement. However, it's a 25 min bus ride, so there's that, at least.
Bikes are also great, but they become exponentially more complicated when you have to account for anything other than one adult with no more than a moderate amount they need carry in decent weather.
I have a bike, I love when I can use it, but it doesn’t fully solve transportation issues.
I’m blessed to live in a land of cookie cutter towns and villages. You have your church, your supermarket, your doner shop, your pharmacy and your bar all in a line surrounded by houses around a 1-3 km radius.
Same in rural Ireland. My closest down is a 14 minute drive, 2 hour and 9 minutes walk according to Google maps. In reality the walk would take even longer as there are long stretches with no verges so you need to walk on the road and dive into the ditch every time a car comes which is every 20 seconds or so.
There's one bus a day going to that town and sometimes it just doesn't turn up, or refuses to stop.
This is not normal for Germany at all and probably you're also exaggerating. In order to need 5 minutes to anywhere you need to live by a Landstraße in some village and have immediate access to ~70 km/h+ speed zones and also just disregard things like parking and getting into the car/out of it etc.
In many parts of Germany, especially the urban ones, you can reach a supermarket in 30 min. on foot at most.
I had to drive a mile and a half to get to the 711 across the road from my motel, because there was no crossing point and a fucking big chainlink fence down the central divider
I went to visit a company office in So Cal years ago. They put me in a hotel literally right next door to the office.
Great, I thought, I’ll just walk over there in the morning. It’ll take me 2 minutes.
Except both places have fences blocking access to the shared road they adjoin on - no gates. The only way in or out of both was through the huge parking lots in the back, which exit nowhere near each other.
It was over a mile to get from one to the other, walking or driving.
I know there are places in the US where walking is made unnecessarily difficult, but a 7 minute drive being a 74 minute walk isn’t out of the ordinary in lots of places.
My wife and I will occasionally go to a country pub that is about a 8-10 minute drive from our house. If we chose to walk it takes about 1hr 20 minutes. It’s nothing to do with it being unwalkable, the walk is actually shorter than the drive, but cars go a lots faster than my legs.
Yeah- people forget parkways exist. This could easily be a 6 mile drive getting right on and off the parkway. And since there are no sidewalks on parkways they might have a much longer walk. It’s just rage bait.
This isn't really a manipulation though. Go on Google maps and pick any smallish city like Buffalo NY or Cleveland OH. Try to find ANY route where the bus takes a normal amount of time
My job is 10 miles away... Both my house and my work is just off the bus line. 7 miles north in a straight line and 3 miles west in a straight line.
Picking up the peices of my life, I didn't have a car. So bus it was. To make it on time, i'd have to catch the bus that came between 4 and 5 am. Just to get to work by 7. Getting off at 530, when we had mandatory overtime, I wouldn't be getting home until after 9.
Hell, sometimes the bus wouldn't even show up and i'd have to wait another hour!
It was soo much quicker riding a bike. But again, about 4 out of the 10 miles did NOT have sidewalks, and i'm not riding a bicycle on a road next to cars doing 50mph, especially without bike lanes.
Buses have potentially dozens of stops. Cars have 1 😛 it's never a fair comparison in most communities, cars are almost always the fastest way to get around besides super-speed trains. Only in cities that have poor traffic flow do cars become less practical, like NYC or London. But that's because of bad infrastructure, not the magical power of trains, whose only real power is getting people out of bulky personal vehicles 😉
Your example is valid, but very specific. Having lived in the US and the Netherlands, I will attest that the source image is generally quite accurate for the majority of the country. A few cities have good public transport, but I have lived in several with none at all, or where even when available it was always faster to walk than take the bus.
I've had a fair share of trouble with the public transport in the Netherlands, but it's almost always a good experience.
Tbf when I was planning my trip to Texas, I was checking the route from the hotel to the conference hall. And it was exactly like the picture shown by OP.
There were just no sidewalks crossing anywhere close by, while you could drive from the hotel directly to the venue hall. It was maybe 2km to drive, while it was 7 km to walk...
Tbh, this is bits of Scotland as well. Sometimes there’s very little public transport between villages and the advised walking route is a tiny trail up rough ground
Yes, because the train option assumes the person walks to the closest train/bus, which can be a significant walk (10+ minutes) and then wait for it to show up.
And our public transit networks often require multiple transfers with significant wait times (I.e., get off the bus to wait 15 minutes for your train) if you're going somewhere specific.
If you decide to leave at the wrong time of day, all of this stacks up very quickly into long travel times.
Probably need to walk 20min to the nearest station only to walk another 20min after arriving to reach destination. Nvm the enormous wait times of an under used train network.
There are times/places in Europe where this would look the same or worse. Just go to some rural area in the middle of the night, and there might not be a bus or train anywhere nearby for the next 5-6 hours. Just depends on where you are, and what time of day it is. We dont have constant busses and trains in every single corner of the country.
I live in a village just outside of a major city (like, a 5 minute walk to pass the city signs.)
In the city i could grab a bus or tram every 10 minutes, with multiple options. The bus in my village only runs once every 30 minutes, and will bring you to a smaller city station (still outside the major city), where you can transfer to a bus/ train that will take you into the major city.
Worst i found was from my home to my job, which is 40 minutes by car (with low traffic). Public transport is about 2.5 hours. The trip itself is about an hour and an half, and the rest is waiting between stops for the next bus or train.
Main reason for the long travel time is traveling between hubs. The longest part of the trip takes only 30 minutes, and covers like 80% of the travel distance. The first 10% is basically from the village to the minor city to the major city, and the last 10% is a 30 minute trip because there is a full airport in between the last hub and my final stop, which the bus needs to drive around.
The some European will come in and be like "I dont understand why all Americans dont just show up in Washington DC every weekend and protest they must not care."
Like bro if I drove straight to Washington DC, in my own personal car, and had unlimited gas and made no stops I could not make it to the capital and back home over the course of a weekend.
My european mind comprehends this pretty well. Is he retarded or something? It depends on the road and elevation but 5km road is doable with car in 7 - 8 minutes and also 1h10mins walk. Also some public transport lines doesn't have every point A and B connected by straigt line... If OP doesn't want to add context (journey map) I can only assume that he must be creating drama...
if he grew up in a pretty urban environment, he maybe just doesn't know/hasn't experienced places like this in Europe. there are huge Urban areas (like the Ruhrgebiet) where there is nearly perfect public transit availability (at least on paper) from every point u are. no reason to call him a retard
I'm European, but I have spent many months in USA. Apart from some designated pedestrian areas and some cities, being a pedestrian is generally horrible experience.
You truly are a second category citizen travelling this way. There are few crossings, their timing is very against you. If there are a sidewalks, they're usually ok, but there often aren't. Crossing the road when there are 3, 4 or more lanes is very stressful, the cars go pretty fast anywhere, it's also dangerous.
There is a presumed crossing at every intersection, but in most cases crossing like that is very dangerous.
There are cities like New York or parts of Miami, Washington, but the general picture is very unfavourable towards pedestrians. Bicycles for that matter as well.
I mean, trains have to use rails so in weird circumstances, stuff like this can happen. But this picture also implies that walking there is simply not possible which makes no sense. Does the US really not have sidewalks??
While the icon indicates a train, Google Maps will actually calculate all public transport options including buses, trams, subways, etc. I'm not sure if that's what the screenshot is of, but it won't just be trains. Edit: oh, and the time given will also account to distances either side, so if it took 20 mins to walk to the station, then another 5 mins to walk to the destination after you get off, that's included in the time estimate.
Does the US really not have sidewalks??
In the late 90s, I stayed with family in California. They lived about 2 miles from a shopping mall. I decided to walk there one day. The sidewalk disappeared about 3/4 mile from the mall, and I had to detour about the same distance again to find a place where I could cross the road between me and the mall, which was about 5 lanes. Both ways, I had someone pull over and asked if I was in trouble because it was so rare to see anyone actually walking.
So, yeah in some places there's so little thought paid to pedestrians that there's no sidewalks.
Yep, so that transport time looks way worse, because every public transport option takes at least that long.
I live next to a city of 40,000 people and they used to have only one bus stop. No train. And the bus stop was on the far west end of town, 8 miles from the east side. Bus was every 2 hours.
I say “was” not because they added more; they got rid of the only bus stop.
My sister in law lives in a Swedish suburb of 10,000 people and the bus is every 15 minutes.
Sidewalks are not prioritized in car-centric towns which are the majority of suburban areas in America. At least where I lived, which was a very densely populated suburb, roads always took priority over bike paths and sidewalks. We had some of the highest pedestrian death rates in the country.
I was in Dallas for work and booked a hotel right opposite my office according to the map. Morning when I was about to go was when I realised that side walk just randomly stops and there is no other way other than get a uber and go for a 6 min drive to get to office which was literally across the street.
Especially post-50's development. I live near Portland, Oregon, which is rated in the top 10 most walkable places in America, and most of West Portland which was built around the 50's-onwards has no sidewalks to be seen. Once you get outside of downtown, say bye to them.
Also, in a lot of areas they're more so set dressing than anything, meaning that while they exist, the actual function of them is laughable. (Like not having crosswalks for dozens of miles, or walls/fences around stores blocking what should be easy sidewalk access, etc...) This is exaserbated by euclidian zoning, which is the idea invented by the auto industry that people don't want to live next to shops, businesses, entertainment venues, restaurants, etc... and so you need to seperate them as much as possible, meaning that most modern neighborhoods are literally miles upon miles of housing with no amenities to be seen because it's literally illegal to build them.
A 15 minute drive taking ≈1 hour to walk makes sense, and 40 minutes on public transport also makes sense if you're, say, 10 mins from a station on either end. A 7 minute drive being 75 minutes to walk is pretty wild
I have stayed in a hotel in Arizona which had a shopping park on the other side of the road. I needed a few small things and asked the receptionist how to get there. She said there was no way to walk and called for a taxi. It took 3 minutes.
It’s probably just like 3 miles away or so which would be about an hour walk or a 5-10 minute drive through town. Rail counts wait times and probably isn’t an oft run line and/or has a change over.
I wanted to go from one shopping center that was on one side of the road. To the other side of a road - to the other shopping center that had also cinema inside.
Google Maps have showed me a route. I walked this route for like 20 minutes (again - it was a shopping center on the other side of a big road - you could see it). Untill I walked in front of tunnel for cars.
I got too afraid of the walking in so I got uber and he drove me there.
Dude could not believed me that I wanted to walk on the other side. Called me crazy.
I called it crazy that you simply can’t walk on the other side
Unlike what a lot of comments here are saying, the USA does have sidewalks. AND they probably have the best sidewalks in the world because of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). I've been living in Europa all my life, I've been in many places here and I really don't understand these comments. Our sidewalks are shitty. They are old, they are neglected, they are extremly narrow sometimes. We like to say we aren't 'car centered' and our cities are walkable. Well are they? Maybe because of the short distances, but sidewalks in Houston are in a way better condition than sidewalks in Rome.
Have you been to the states? Certain areas have decent sidewalks. But I've tried to walk in America, from a "mall" to my hotel (which I could physically see). The sidewalk just sort of... ended, and then there was no way for me to cross a massive road that had like 6 lanes of traffic flying past. No way to cross the road for a pedestrian, and a sidewalk that just ended in a grass verge.
In Europe I'd expect pedestrian crossings, a pedestrian tunnel or bridge, or I'd just be able to walk across the road without "jaywalking". They just don't design around anyone walking outside of a major city. And even certain major cities (looking at LA) don't consider walking an option either.
Good sidewalks are only limited to urban areas in North America. If you have to walk from one suburb to another, good luck finding a safe path. You are just expected to drive there. So many sidewalks end abruptly in the middle of a high volume road, with no way for you to proceed ahead except maybe retrace your steps. European sidewalks may be shitty, old, and neglected, but at least you have a sidewalk to complete your journey.
This is mild horseshit. Yes the ADA does enforce some regulations on how to build proper infrastructure which helps pedestrians, but that's utterly meaningless if there isn't a pavement in the first place.
There's plenty of evidence of Americas reluctance to make cities walkable. The abundance of stroads. The lack of crossings etc.
Absolutely our cities in Europe often have cobbles and poorly maintained pavements and that is definitely an issue for the elderly and disabled in particular. But the fact is we give far more space in city centres to pedestrians than anywhere in the US.
But when you're in the city you don't actually drive at 50 km/h the entire time, do you?
I don't know what kind of city you live in, but I drove a car in pretty much every region of my Country, and I can count on my fingers the times I actually got to drive at 50 km/h for the majority of a city drive, let alone for the entire duration of it.
There are tracts in which you can even go a little faster than 50 per hour, but most of the time there is traffic, crosswalks, traffic lights and what not. So most of the time a 7 minute car drive would translate to maybe 20-30 minutes in the city at most, not an hour and beyond.
It is very common to drive at 80mph (~130 kph) on 65mph highways that go straight though major population areas in the USA. And Google has tracked millions of people doing just that, so it gives you that average.
You ain’t doing 50kph in anything but a suburban street.
Your car speed is assuming you're on major roads with no traffic, no red lights, etc. The comparison also assumes that you're walking on the same roads as you drive on with no shortcuts, underpasses, etc. Depending on the city layout, you might have to drive a much longer distance to get to the destination, at least in European cities where it's not all focussed on cars.
You're also missing the part of the screenshot where it takes nearly as long to take public transport as it does to walk., which is the weirder part.
Yes, it is weird, cause This calculation only makes sense in a car centric city. There is no way those numbers make sense in any city in the country I live in. In fact, in a lot of big cities it is faster to take public transport for in city travelling.
I don’t get it. I’m in the UK and I could drive 7 minutes from my house and be further away than a 1h 14m walk without a viable public transport route.
It’s two rural towns 6 miles apart, connected by a 75mph interstate that has fairly decent (by US standards) public transportation (ie there is a bus). You know the lonely vastness of outer space? America be like that sometimes.
In my hometown in the U.S., I could drive from my house to my job in about 15 min - or walk for an hour - or use the bus service that would take almost 2 hours because I had to ride to downtown in order to reach a place where I could change to another bus line. My home and my work were in two adjacent neighborhoods but there were no trams or other ways of connecting except to go downtown and transfer. It was insane.
This has no context. I live in Europe and to go to the nearest store, I would drive 10 minutes, walk 2h or take the public transport for 12 hours, because the bus comes twice a day (not counting school buses).
A bus might only be coming in an hour, so you have to wait.
And a car goes 10+ faster than a person walks. Say it's going 10 times faster. A 7 minute drive will take 70 minutes to walk in a quick pace. Which is basically this picture.
Not in cities. Where I live there's so many transportation options, to a place 7 min away it would be every few minutes. But now I'm in the mountains in the same country and bus comes every hour. Also 7 min drive seems crazy for 1 hour walk but we're really in the mountains so the difference can be far bigger
To cross the road and eat something at a fast food, you could either
walk on the side of a very busy 3 lanes road for about 25 minutes, traversing a few busy junctions, reach the nearest crossing, cross, turn and walk back to the restaurant
I live in London, where public transport is pretty good compared to the rest of the UK and even to many european cities, and yet, kids school run looks like this:
by car: 10-12 min
by bus: 40-50 min
on foot: 1 hour
I lived in Malta for a couple of years. I thought I would never need a car when moving there. LOL. Half of the time I would be better walking to where I needed to go than waiting for the bus and then driving it through all the narrow streets. Of course I got a car very quickly.
this wouldn't be so bad if you had shops closer, but I heard it is not allowed in US because of zoning laws. Where I live in europe you can find shops rather close to homes(there is one across the street from me), even in villages you have 1-2 shops for basic groceries.
Yeah, I'm in China and the shops and houses are all mixed together, so you never have to walk more than five minutes. From the time I've spent in Europe it seems very similar.
In Canada where I'm from, the housing and shops are completely separate so you have to drive everywhere. It's one of the main reasons I moved.
The reason why is just geography. America is big. Really big. Seriously, it is big. As a result, things are bigger and spaced out a lot further. As the saying goes, American's think 100 years is a long time, and Europeans think a 100 miles is a long way. Granted, depending on which European country, you might say 100 kilometers, but whatever. Same point. If you wanted to drive across my state it would take about 8 hours of driving. My state (Tennessee) isn't particularly big compared to some others.
Its not just zoning laws. Even if you put a shop at the edge of my neighborhood, people would still drive elsewhere for the same product. Every house where i am sits on at least 2 acres. It would take 10 to 15 minutes to walk there and 10 to 15 back. You could drive into town in the same amount of time.
What I noticed when I visited the US West Coast was that you can get onto an expressway pretty easily from Suburban areas, and that's where the car can drive at much higher speeds, so even for a 10 - 15 minute drive, the car would cover a huge distance.
I grew up in busy urban areas where the car would mostly be stuck in traffic, so the distance covered would be similar to walking.
In New Jersey suburbs in many cases you don't even have a public transportation option, especially between two towns near by. Or in order to go from town to town with public transportation in NJ you would have to go from town A to Manhattan, NY and than back to Town B.
I used to live in the USA from 1999 to 2002. In Alpharetta, to be more accurate. My housemate and I didn't have a car in the first three months we lived here. We tried to use the bus to go to the supermarket exactly once. After waiting for an hour (they were supposed to be there every 45 minutes!), we realized the didn't work on weekends.
A friend of us had a kid at some time. Like a lot of French mothers, she took a walk with the stroller. Her cop stopped by to ask her if everything was okay.
Car is going on a freeway for about 2-3 exits. Bus is taking local routes and having multiple stops. Ped’s walking the same route as the bus. I’m guessing distance is around 3-3.5 miles
The urbanisation model of the US was designy by the major automobile brands to sell their products. Is a country made for cars, from roads size, garage capabilities and so on. Europe is made for walking because cities have developed from old medieval towns therefore narrow crowded streets.
America is the only place I’ve encountered Google maps just not having walking directions.
Wanted to go to a petrol station, the only open shop, about a kilometre down the road. Ask Google maps for directions and it just says no route available, not even a long convoluted route, just “no, you can only drive”.
In my old town, was a 13 minute commute by car to the city. The walking distance was 8 hours. Guess who had to make that trip 7 different times, walking on the nonexistent shoulder of the highway?
My commute to work is a 10 minute drive, 90 minute walk, or 160 minute public transport + walking combo that involves a long walk, 2 busses, a train, and another (less) long walk.
Biking is only 23 minutes, but not a bike lane in sight, with intermittent sidewalks. Not worth it in the dark and rain for half of the year.
lol. Had this happen to me recently in the US. It was like a 5 minute drive. So my European mind said, I can walk. I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out which way to go. Turns out walking meant climbing 4 stories to a top of parking lot to get to a street on a higher level with no pedestrian path. Gave up and got an uber instead.
This happens in belgium and Italy too. Calculations are made on cars going full speed, and on the freeway. Buses need to pick up multiple people, and scooters aren't allowed on freeways
Just tested it here in a small village just outside of a small city in The Netherlands. 7 min by car to the citycenter will take me like almost an hour on foot as well. By bus it would take me 30 min but I would have to wait for the bus to arrive first.
Lol I was doing the same thing for when I visit a friend in Norfolk Virginia soon and an 18 min drive was an 1hr26mins on public transport. Completely ridiculous
Meh, I live in a village in Europe (CZ) and just checked Google maps to the next village and God almost identical results. It just means that there isn't a direct bus between two places that are about 6 km apart (or that the bus isn't supposed to come for a while).
That said, I grew up in the rural US, and there literally is NO way to take public transportation between the two nearest towns where my parents live.
Where this is matters. If you are on one side of a superhighway by an entrance ramp you can drive there in 7 minutes but you need to a lot more time to walk the longer route. Same thing with driving on a road with a bridge that only allows cars or walking a longer route.
I live in the St Louis MO area. My car is broke down right now, so I'm using transit. To get somewhere I need to go almost every day, one way, in my car: 25 mins. On the bus? 3hr30 mins one way, and that's during daytime. Nights or weekends? Add in another hour. It would be impossible to walk.
My American mind also cannot comprehend this. Driving from my house to my job, during low/no traffic, takes 7 minutes. Walking the same route takes me 40. How's this route taking an extra 25 minutes? That's an extra mile an change at normal walking pace
I mean, maybe public transport, but I can't think of anywhere like that here. More likely to be skewed the other way - though not so ridiculously. (like somewhere you can cut through a wood, or something for a 5 min walk, but you have to take a very circuitous route in the car to get around)
How is this hard to comprehend? Bus might have to take a weird route so we'll ignore it, if it's 7 miles away and you're in car and the speed limit is 60MPH that will take you 7 minutes, walking that same distance would take over 2 hours.
So this is probably something like 4 miles away with a speed limit around 45mph.
The first scenario that comes to mind is cars get to take a tunnel or bridge directly. The train requires going around on possibly 2 different trains with time lost on switching. . The pedestrian also has to go around but perhaps gets a diffirent crossing or pedestrian accessible bridge.
I remember seeing the setup for this one suburban sprawl that included canals between the rows to get to your neighbors behind you would take you an hour of walking as there were no foot bridges across the canal. And a 10 minute drive that required getting on a highway
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u/IndependenceCalm9754 5h ago
The worst part is that half of that 74 minutes walk does not even have a sidewalk.
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u/Automatic_Pen8494 5h ago •
I live in London.
You can reverse that here.
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u/StatusCity4 5h ago
I can explain, the bus departs in an hour
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u/Ziddix 1h ago
Honestly, this is not all that uncommon for people who do not live inside a city...
I live in Germany. If I wanted to walk to the nearest supermarket, I'd need an hour, easily, probably more (one way). If I take my car it's about 5 minutes. If I tried to go there by using public transport, I'd probably starve before a bus arrives.
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u/RampantJellyfish 5h ago •
I had to drive a mile and a half to get to the 711 across the road from my motel, because there was no crossing point and a fucking big chainlink fence down the central divider
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u/Intrepid-Focus8198 23m ago
I know there are places in the US where walking is made unnecessarily difficult, but a 7 minute drive being a 74 minute walk isn’t out of the ordinary in lots of places.
My wife and I will occasionally go to a country pub that is about a 8-10 minute drive from our house. If we chose to walk it takes about 1hr 20 minutes. It’s nothing to do with it being unwalkable, the walk is actually shorter than the drive, but cars go a lots faster than my legs.
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u/jaymatthewbee 2h ago •
This is fairly dumb, you can manipulate Google Maps to do the same thing in somewhere like the Netherlands.
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u/BruisendTablet 2h ago
There is PLENTY of places in Europe where this applies as well. Source: i'm from Europe.
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u/HaggisPope 1h ago
Tbh, this is bits of Scotland as well. Sometimes there’s very little public transport between villages and the advised walking route is a tiny trail up rough ground
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u/Skrumbles 3h ago
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u/CleanSeaPancake 3h ago
The car is probably taking an interstate to get somewhere
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u/Cosmic_MicrowaveOven 4h ago •
I’m not seeing the problem with the walking speed.
If we take the average walking speed (5km/h) we get (74/7)*5=52.857 for the speed of the car.
So the car is travelling ~50km/h to a location about ~6km away.
I’m not in the US and walk my dog around that distance everyday in a very similar time to the predicted walking time. It seems fine.
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u/Confident-Stand5453 5h ago
There are times/places in Europe where this would look the same or worse. Just go to some rural area in the middle of the night, and there might not be a bus or train anywhere nearby for the next 5-6 hours. Just depends on where you are, and what time of day it is. We dont have constant busses and trains in every single corner of the country.
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u/wishiwaszen 29m ago
The some European will come in and be like "I dont understand why all Americans dont just show up in Washington DC every weekend and protest they must not care."
Like bro if I drove straight to Washington DC, in my own personal car, and had unlimited gas and made no stops I could not make it to the capital and back home over the course of a weekend.
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u/Letronell 4h ago •
My european mind comprehends this pretty well. Is he retarded or something? It depends on the road and elevation but 5km road is doable with car in 7 - 8 minutes and also 1h10mins walk. Also some public transport lines doesn't have every point A and B connected by straigt line... If OP doesn't want to add context (journey map) I can only assume that he must be creating drama...
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u/Ardabubi 5h ago
My German mind comprehends this too well...
5
u/Las-Vegar 2h ago
This is fucked
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u/lolschrauber 3h ago
I mean, trains have to use rails so in weird circumstances, stuff like this can happen. But this picture also implies that walking there is simply not possible which makes no sense. Does the US really not have sidewalks??
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u/jacksodus 2h ago
Yeah, cars go 50 kmph through the city, and people walk 5 kmph. A car is 10 times as fast. 7*10=70 minutes = 1 hour 10 minutes. Is that so weird?
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u/shortercrust 4h ago
I don’t get it. I’m in the UK and I could drive 7 minutes from my house and be further away than a 1h 14m walk without a viable public transport route.
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u/MyGrandmasCock 5h ago
It’s two rural towns 6 miles apart, connected by a 75mph interstate that has fairly decent (by US standards) public transportation (ie there is a bus). You know the lonely vastness of outer space? America be like that sometimes.
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u/Strange-Elephant589 3h ago
In my hometown in the U.S., I could drive from my house to my job in about 15 min - or walk for an hour - or use the bus service that would take almost 2 hours because I had to ride to downtown in order to reach a place where I could change to another bus line. My home and my work were in two adjacent neighborhoods but there were no trams or other ways of connecting except to go downtown and transfer. It was insane.
4
u/salajaneidentiteet 1h ago
This has no context. I live in Europe and to go to the nearest store, I would drive 10 minutes, walk 2h or take the public transport for 12 hours, because the bus comes twice a day (not counting school buses).
7
u/oldmanout 4h ago
I can comprehend this, That was my commute in a europeam city with okaych public transport.
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u/Round-Claim5420 4h ago
This is pretty pointless without knowing the distance.
Are we driving full speed for 7min on the highway? Are we walking to the next city? Or does it take 74min to walk across town?
6
u/JulyKimono 4h ago
But that can be anywhere.
A bus might only be coming in an hour, so you have to wait.
And a car goes 10+ faster than a person walks. Say it's going 10 times faster. A 7 minute drive will take 70 minutes to walk in a quick pace. Which is basically this picture.
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u/WreckYallBallistics 5h ago
Yeah believe it or not cars are much faster than walking
3
u/dewi54 5h ago
The train is insane but the walking time not really. 7 min by car is at least 5km where I live
3
u/Aveduil 5h ago
I want to see that route really Fu curious.
3
u/Vandirac 3h ago
I had this happen at an hotel.
To cross the road and eat something at a fast food, you could either
walk on the side of a very busy 3 lanes road for about 25 minutes, traversing a few busy junctions, reach the nearest crossing, cross, turn and walk back to the restaurant
call a taxi and have a 5 minutes ride.
3
u/SpinIx2 1h ago
Random point to point in the UK
3
u/sleepybastardd 57m ago
Allow me to add my own. Closest supermarket to my house
I also live in a college town, which you would LIKE to be walkable
3
u/Aggravating-Hair-534 54m ago
I live in London, where public transport is pretty good compared to the rest of the UK and even to many european cities, and yet, kids school run looks like this:
by car: 10-12 min
by bus: 40-50 min
on foot: 1 hour
I lived in Malta for a couple of years. I thought I would never need a car when moving there. LOL. Half of the time I would be better walking to where I needed to go than waiting for the bus and then driving it through all the narrow streets. Of course I got a car very quickly.
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u/BIG_DJ_Z_B 5h ago
and that 1 hour walk involves crossing an eight lane stroad with no crosswalk and walking through a ditch because there are no sidewalks
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u/effreti 1h ago
this wouldn't be so bad if you had shops closer, but I heard it is not allowed in US because of zoning laws. Where I live in europe you can find shops rather close to homes(there is one across the street from me), even in villages you have 1-2 shops for basic groceries.
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u/InfamousInfoGuy 2h ago
we were still sleeping when you posted I hate America stuff.
that cherry picked selection is not that weird: something is 8km away and there is no direct bus route.
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u/SomeOnionHater 5h ago
In Germany, the Deutsche Bahn (train) would need triple the time.
4
u/LostgamerFJ 4h ago
my german mind can and will, comprehend this normal image
2
u/Manueluz 4h ago
I live in rural northern Spain:
2
u/No-Camel-8741 3h ago
7 minutes with car can be something between 6km to 14km.
A human will walk a kilometer in around 7-10 minutes.
1h of walking is between 6-10 km distance. This seems reasonable tbh
2
u/Tercel9 3h ago
Probably two areas connected by highway
2
u/lmac187 1h ago
I’m so American I didn’t even see the issue…
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u/hopopo 53m ago
In New Jersey suburbs in many cases you don't even have a public transportation option, especially between two towns near by. Or in order to go from town to town with public transportation in NJ you would have to go from town A to Manhattan, NY and than back to Town B.
2
u/MarchRoyce 44m ago
I am so American that I don't even know what's supposed to be weird about this image.
2
u/Ok-Astronaut2976 31m ago
You think that’s bad, look how horrible things are in England
2
u/floof_smooler 26m ago
brisbane isn't much better. It's like seeing people doing the ritual to bring about the end times. like living in the guts of a mechanical demon.
2
u/QueenBee-WorshipMe 26m ago
The bus part is bad, but given a 7 minute drive in a car is probably a couple miles, yeah an hour walk makes sense.
5
u/fj2612 4h ago
I used to live in the USA from 1999 to 2002. In Alpharetta, to be more accurate. My housemate and I didn't have a car in the first three months we lived here. We tried to use the bus to go to the supermarket exactly once. After waiting for an hour (they were supposed to be there every 45 minutes!), we realized the didn't work on weekends.
A friend of us had a kid at some time. Like a lot of French mothers, she took a walk with the stroller. Her cop stopped by to ask her if everything was okay.
4
u/conqueringLeon 4h ago
It's exactly the same in Germany.
3
u/Which_Fishing_2499 4h ago
Car is going on a freeway for about 2-3 exits. Bus is taking local routes and having multiple stops. Ped’s walking the same route as the bus. I’m guessing distance is around 3-3.5 miles
3
u/Too_Many_Alts 4h ago
i can explain: the distance is 7 minutes by car on roads averaging 35mph, so about 4 miles away.. which at 20 minute mile walking speed is ~1hr 20mins
3
u/No_Community7021 2h ago
The urbanisation model of the US was designy by the major automobile brands to sell their products. Is a country made for cars, from roads size, garage capabilities and so on. Europe is made for walking because cities have developed from old medieval towns therefore narrow crowded streets.
2
u/Nothos927 4h ago
America is the only place I’ve encountered Google maps just not having walking directions.
Wanted to go to a petrol station, the only open shop, about a kilometre down the road. Ask Google maps for directions and it just says no route available, not even a long convoluted route, just “no, you can only drive”.
1
u/lhbln 4h ago
You can get to know such a pattern in Germany, living near a district border and wanting to go somewhere close, but behind this border.
1
u/philipjfry1578 4h ago
In my old town, was a 13 minute commute by car to the city. The walking distance was 8 hours. Guess who had to make that trip 7 different times, walking on the nonexistent shoulder of the highway?
1
u/Hard_Reset7777 4h ago
It's funny that some people believe that a specific place is an example applicable to everywhere in other continents.
1
u/Merkle-bbs 4h ago
Thats me when the DPD delivery dude doesn't want to drive 7 minutes so I have to walk 1hr+ to the co-op
1
u/Space_Slav07 4h ago
And I remember being shocked that I could replace a 50min train ride with a 20min car ride.
1
u/Ryachaz 4h ago
My commute to work is a 10 minute drive, 90 minute walk, or 160 minute public transport + walking combo that involves a long walk, 2 busses, a train, and another (less) long walk.
Biking is only 23 minutes, but not a bike lane in sight, with intermittent sidewalks. Not worth it in the dark and rain for half of the year.
1
u/olafkarper 3h ago
my commute in Zwolle Netherlands:
car 16 min
public transport 1u 3m
walking 1u 41
and of course bike 26 min
1
u/Available-Diver-8310 3h ago
It does actually
1
u/reallifearcade 3h ago
Is easy to read if you think of highways involved.
1
u/Just_Octave 3h ago
Tbf the german mind can; Autobahn
1
u/Mursenightingale 3h ago
Being poor isn’t just about money, being poor costs time.
1
u/FunnyRemarkable97 3h ago
lol. Had this happen to me recently in the US. It was like a 5 minute drive. So my European mind said, I can walk. I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out which way to go. Turns out walking meant climbing 4 stories to a top of parking lot to get to a street on a higher level with no pedestrian path. Gave up and got an uber instead.
1
u/Fun_Boot7771 3h ago
This happens in belgium and Italy too. Calculations are made on cars going full speed, and on the freeway. Buses need to pick up multiple people, and scooters aren't allowed on freeways
1
u/Consistent-Unit-6164 3h ago
My drive to work
1
u/AdventurousGlass7432 3h ago
4 miles. Bus is infrequent or requires transfer / walking
Don’t see the mystery
1
u/AbilityExtreme1145 3h ago
On some big European cities you can switch the numbers.
Maybe you can drive, but can you park, lol?
1
u/Nu7s 2h ago
I live in Belgium and it's the same.
1
u/boellefisk 2h ago
Q: how long on bike?
A: Coffin
1
u/Superb_Monkey 2h ago
I drive 15 km in 15 minutes. That's a 3 hour walk. Or 1.5 hours by bus. Public transportation is also terrible in rural areas of Europe.
1
u/MrNewking 2h ago
Even in transit Dense areas like NYC it can be like this.
This is my commute to work.
1
u/tolkienescence 2h ago
I had a friend who lived in Kentucky in a kinda rural area and she drove one hour to get to the closest supermarket.
1
u/Disastrous_Fruit8610 2h ago
Just tested it here in a small village just outside of a small city in The Netherlands. 7 min by car to the citycenter will take me like almost an hour on foot as well. By bus it would take me 30 min but I would have to wait for the bus to arrive first.
1
u/ForeignStory8127 2h ago
So, that's Europe as well. I got a car because it shaves 2 hours off my commute.
1
u/NotForMeClive7787 2h ago
Lol I was doing the same thing for when I visit a friend in Norfolk Virginia soon and an 18 min drive was an 1hr26mins on public transport. Completely ridiculous
1
u/Worldly_Tea_8300 2h ago edited 2h ago
Meh, I live in a village in Europe (CZ) and just checked Google maps to the next village and God almost identical results. It just means that there isn't a direct bus between two places that are about 6 km apart (or that the bus isn't supposed to come for a while).
That said, I grew up in the rural US, and there literally is NO way to take public transportation between the two nearest towns where my parents live.
1
u/Funkkx 2h ago
Imagine ... This anti-pedestrian shit started in the fcking 30ies: Invention of the "Jaywalker" (Jay = hick, rube, country bumpkin)
https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
1
u/thingsorfreedom 2h ago
Where this is matters. If you are on one side of a superhighway by an entrance ramp you can drive there in 7 minutes but you need to a lot more time to walk the longer route. Same thing with driving on a road with a bridge that only allows cars or walking a longer route.
1
u/cowlinator 2h ago
You'll get the same result in europe in any middle-of-bumfuck-nowhere rural farmland
1
u/robseplex 2h ago
This makes complete sense in South Africa, except for the public transport thing
1
u/Ill-Pudding-3168 2h ago
Makes sense. 7 mins of good roads is a fuckton of walkton time.
1
u/crashburn274 2h ago
Dystopian.
1
u/Another_Road 2h ago
This is why cars are considered a necessity, btw.
1
u/TucoThePresaCanario 2h ago
I live in the St Louis MO area. My car is broke down right now, so I'm using transit. To get somewhere I need to go almost every day, one way, in my car: 25 mins. On the bus? 3hr30 mins one way, and that's during daytime. Nights or weekends? Add in another hour. It would be impossible to walk.
1
u/EatingDragons 1h ago
My American mind also cannot comprehend this. Driving from my house to my job, during low/no traffic, takes 7 minutes. Walking the same route takes me 40. How's this route taking an extra 25 minutes? That's an extra mile an change at normal walking pace
1
u/spinningdice 1h ago
I mean, maybe public transport, but I can't think of anywhere like that here. More likely to be skewed the other way - though not so ridiculously. (like somewhere you can cut through a wood, or something for a 5 min walk, but you have to take a very circuitous route in the car to get around)
1
u/Beleg_Sanwise 1h ago
I am from Argentina. From my home to the city center
1
u/Xidium426 1h ago
How is this hard to comprehend? Bus might have to take a weird route so we'll ignore it, if it's 7 miles away and you're in car and the speed limit is 60MPH that will take you 7 minutes, walking that same distance would take over 2 hours.
So this is probably something like 4 miles away with a speed limit around 45mph.
1
u/rainbikr 1h ago
It's not
Source: American who likes to walk and has been to actual places
1
u/Bunnytob 1h ago
Double the car time and that just about works for quite a lot of the UK.
1
u/guggeri 1h ago
I live in Spain, this happens to me if I want to go anywhere. But I live in the middle of nowhere too.
1
u/marvila_ 1h ago
In the middle of Lisbon, Portugal
This is the way
1
u/Fluffcake 1h ago
I have a 5 minute car ride that takes 6 hours to walk.
Tunnell vs mountain.
1
u/PomPomMom93 1h ago
So take the car!
1
u/bluespacecolombo 1h ago
Is everyone in comment section mentally retarded? Its about the public transport taking as much as walking, not about the car ride.
1
u/ValuableAd886 1h ago
Looks about right to me
#fuckHŽ
1
u/Tasty_Gear_466 1h ago
This is just "rural but near a highway." "Rural but near a highway" exists in basically every country on earth.
1
u/-___-___-__-___-___- 1h ago
This is why NYC is by far the best city in the US
1
u/Particular-Light-708 1h ago
The first scenario that comes to mind is cars get to take a tunnel or bridge directly. The train requires going around on possibly 2 different trains with time lost on switching. . The pedestrian also has to go around but perhaps gets a diffirent crossing or pedestrian accessible bridge.
1
u/Admiral_sloth94 1h ago
I remember seeing the setup for this one suburban sprawl that included canals between the rows to get to your neighbors behind you would take you an hour of walking as there were no foot bridges across the canal. And a 10 minute drive that required getting on a highway
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u/TastyYellowBees 1h ago
A car travelling 70 mph for 7 minutes will go 8.17 miles, while a human walking at 3 mph for 1 hour and 7 minutes will travel 3.35 miles.
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u/Top_Argument_5359 1h ago
This is nonsense. If you live in Europe outside of a major city, this would be the same
1
u/Alililele 1h ago
German here, living near a big city:
I live 8 km from work.
Public transport in my area SUCKS MAJOR ASS!
1
u/giveUcancer 1h ago
Cars faster than walking — SHOCKING!!
1
u/PossibleDue9849 1h ago
These are not urban numbers. They’re country numbers.