Image transcript:
The “what if you wanted to go to heaven, but god said ____” meme template, but here it says, “What if you wanted to walk to get groceries, but city planners said DRIVE”. The last panel is an image of a massive freeway full of cars.
Uh. I’d walk, because places this packed with cars typically have a convenience store on every corner block.
This is such a stupid argument, lol
They don’t put roads like this to places with no infrastructure. They put it in places with lots of infrastructure, and they have to – because businesses and people in the area need talent from a wide swath of land to fill out roles in companies, etc.
The first high-speed rail system began operations in Japan in 1964, and is known as the Shinkansen The busiest high-speed rail service in the world, carrying more than 420,000 passengers on a typical weekday
– but your chart shows 90,000 per hour.
I’m gonna call bullshit. Biased source is still biased.
420,000 a day vs 90,000 an hour.
They would reach 450,000 passengers served in 5 hours.
The chart isn’t about high-speed rail. High-speed lines often actually have lower capacity than lower-speed rail. For one, many suburban trains are bilevel, which can almost double the capacity per train, whereas high-speed lines often aren’t bilevel. Further, the higher speed doesn’t actually mean you can move more passengers per direction per hour; you’re still limited by how frequently you can run trains, as you need safe stopping distance between each train. Thus, high-speed rail can run faster, but it also needs much more space between trains. Typically the highest frequency train/metro routes can run trains every minute or two. A 2000-person capacity train every 2 minutes is equivalent to 60k passengers per direction per hour.
You ain’t walking it if there is a freeway between you and the store. Even in large cities, walkways that cross major highways are rare.
Perfect example right here where I am. The nearest Del Taco is within a walkable distance; but it’s on the otherside of the freeway. There is no walkable crossing to get over there. I have to drive, despite it being hella stupidly close.
Nobody said you have to walk across the freeway. In places like this there are plenty of stores on your side without having to walk far.
I hate the way people drive here but I am at least able to walk to the grocery store. It’s right across the street.
The only people who force me to walk are physical therapist. I’m looking at you, Maryann!
Yeah, walking definitely isn’t suitable for everyone. What we need is dense communities with layered and diverse transit options. High walkability, abundant protected bike infrastructure, and accessible mass and local transit.
so do you want the earth to magically shrink to be walkable or were u thinking ice age level migration style walking
Walkability is a matter of urban design. Only 20% of the US lives somewhere rural; 80% live in a city, suburb, or small town. We’re taking about how the 80% shops.
Walkability is about lot size, density in general, mixed use development (putting houses near restaurants and shops), parking minimums, that sort of thing.
Walkable areas tend to be connected by public transit. Look at Amsterdam - to get to work, you might bike to the train station, take a train, then walk or bike to the office. You don’t have to walk clear across the city; public transit connects walkable spaces.
Compare that with American suburban design, where shops are put far from houses, on ugly-ass loud dangerous stroads with comically oversized parking lots. You don’t walk anywhere because anywhere you’d want to walk to is incredibly unpleasant to exist in. People will literally drive in their car to a walking path or a gym treadmill.
Just curious: what about a normal bike? Is the distance too big or does it also hurt?
Maybe you’d have been in a better shaped if the infrastructure around you were better, but who the hell knows.
Yea sure, i want to walk to get groceries in January. Totally wouldn’t want to sit in a nice warm car and just drive there
The point isn’t to force people to walk to get groceries. Rather, the point is that many cities have made it essentially impossible to get groceries on foot, even for those who want to. For example, Euclidean zoning in the US and Canada makes it literally illegal to build grocery stores (or any other commercial spaces) in residential areas, meaning grocery stores will be way too far from where most people live to be practical to walk to. Similarly, parking minimums mandate each store have a large, arbitrary amount of parking out front, even if the store owner doesn’t think they need anywhere that much parking. The effect of this is to needlessly spread out cities, yet again making it harder for people to walk to the store if they wish.
If you live in a place where it’s practical, where local laws don’t literally forbid it, walking to the grocery store in January genuinely isn’t bad in the slightest. I live in Montreal, which gets pretty frickin cold in January, and yet everybody and their grandmas walk to the grocery store in my neighborhood. Why? It’s a reasonably dense, walkable neighborhood with several grocery stores within a 5- to 10-minute walk of tons of people. I myself live a 5-minute walk from two grocery stores. For me, scraping ice and snow off a car just to get groceries would be 1000x more annoying than just popping on over to the store on foot.
You will spend more time warming up your car, than walking two minutes for your groceries. Why waste time?
I’d have to walk 2 miles in the snow to get to a grocery store. I can start my car before I leave my house ans have it nice and warm
![[meme] Being forced to drive isn't freedom — it's a government-mandated lifetime subscription to oil(lemmy.world)](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/13b1a771-76a5-4af4-b41f-4c22fc9165a4.webp){kind=link}