something a lot of people miss is, that some people have to shop for more than 3 or 4 people, when I grew up we were 5 plus a somewhat big dog, you can’t really do weekly shopping without some kind of help under these circumstances
I use public transport to get everywhere I can, which is pretty easy where I live, but having 4 full shopping bags on a tram sounds like a horrible experience
Just shop daily instead of weekly. A grocery store just opened three blocks from me so I just walk down with a single canvas bag and grab what I need for the next day or two. For the dog, we walk down to the pet store together to grab his food and a treat or toy for him.
Obviously not possible in many suburbs, but when you live in a walkable area it works great.
It tends to be much easier in walkable/well designed areas because you have a much higher density of grocery stores.
I have about 8 within a 2-10 minute walk. So I don’t really do a big weekly shop, but rather a couple small ones throughout the week.
So yeah, depends hugely on how human-friendly the area is
Look at Mr Fancypants, with enough money to live in a desirable area and have enough time to go for strolls to the grocery store(s).
Seriously though, this is not the norm in the states.
I’m not in a particularly desirable area… I’m also not in the US though.
A bug reason why the only desirable areas tend to be walkable in the US is just because there are so few.
If you promoted widespread walkable city-design, then prices will become more accessible to everyone. Even the poorest areas lf my city are super walkable, even moreso than many of the richer areas.
human-friendly as in you can live there in poverty or human-friendly as in it’s great if you’re middle class?
People in countries and cities with good public transport don’t really do “weekly”. They stop in to the local market on the way home daily or every other day. There’s literally an express type grocery store every block or three, and a full serve store probably 10-15 minutes walk.
I spend a lot of time overseas for work, and getting groceries is without a car is zero trouble.
Have you heard of grocery caddy? It has wheels and can carry more groceries than one person can lift with their own hands.
The heaviest thing I often see people load in their car is a 6-pack of water or soda bottles. It’s better for health and just simpler to drink tap water. Drinking from a plastic bottle means drinking microplastics. And I don’t need to explain why water is better than sodas.
When the train tracks are south of the major highway, and the grocery store is north of the major highway, that doesn’t seem very safe in my area. What do?
That’s just idiotic traffic design. I would tell you a solution but I don’t have one. You either make something happen politically or move. Shitty infrastructure is the worst.
The tracks were originally designed for industrial use only, major industries south of the tracks. Now they’re planning to upgrade them to passenger tracks for Amtrak…
That doesn’t sound like a good or safe idea to me. Most anywhere any everyday passenger would want to visit, save for the beaches, is north of the tracks.
I mean, some sort of highway crossing might be nice. But I mean, one of the big selling points of train tracks are that they’re relatively cheap to build (maybe more expensive than roads but still pretty good). Don’t see why it’d be a safety issue tho.
Also, moving is kinda out of the question in this area, the manufacturing facilities near my area are among the top 10 major industrial facilities in the USA. People working there for decades ain’t about to quit and move just because of some piss poor traffic design, they’re making that good $$$
Maybe the minicipality should invest some of that good $$$ into some good infrastructure.
Though idk afaik different areas in the US are varying levels of incompetent when it comes to that.
Instant Teleportation when?
If we ever figure out teleportation, it will be expensive. Of course, there’s a free tier where you get teleported into a void where you will have to watch ads for 20 minutes before you get sent to your destination. Complete with regular reminders that you can simply upgrade your plan to get out of teleportation purgatory immediately.
You likely wouldn’t actually want that, as the way it works on star trek at least is to effectively kill you (by recording all your molecules etc then ripping you apart), move your molecules to the new place and then reassemble you.
There’s no real way to do ‘instant’ teleportation like you suggest either as it most likely breaks the laws of physics, things have to move to get places, best you could probably do is very fast teleportation.
Yeah, though this is difficult for anything with a significant mount of mass beyond that of a photon. The closest scientists and engineers etc have currently got to anything close to the possibility of going very very very fast is the Alcubierre drive. However, that’s still very speculative and probably nowhere close to being built.
The most impressive tech ioo that they can come up with for space travel and exists at the moment is Ion thrusters.
You teleport the groceries, not the person to the store. That would be silly
At that point though, I feel like we could have just grown or made a lot of stuff locally. I hope that we don’t still have capitalism and thus the need for stores if we have such advanced technology. Heck, it might even lead to replicators if we’re already playing around with matter.
Only if you live in a city
My parents, who live in a town, can just walk to buy their groceries instead.
Good for them, but I know a dozen towns that are big enough you can’t, or the only store wouldn’t be in realistic walking distance for at least half the residents.
And even those that can, you have to either be in good health. So it isn’t like your parents (or anyone’s) will always be able to walk to the grocery.
You are right, I just wanted to point out, that trains aren’t the only possible option. For people who can’t walk, there might be bicycles and mobility scooters instead, which also do not take up too much space.
“boss battle”
So fucking cringe.
