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Comment by bunderbunder | Hacker News Reader

Random anecdotes:

When I'm traveling, if I ask the hotel staff to recommend any restaurants "within walking distance", they'll grimace and say there aren't really any, even while Yelp informs me that there are six within a kilometer.

Yesterday I ended up spending about 15 minutes waiting for a bus that was late. Someone else spent about the same amount of time as me waiting on that normal street corner, and then got back off the bus about 5 blocks later. So, that makes ~15 minutes standing around waiting for the bus and $2.25 spent on a fare, in order to save a 5 minute walk. I assume they're at least as able-bodied as I am, because, unlike me, they didn't opt to sit on the bench during the wait.

I just don't think the US has a culture that considers feet to be a valid mode of transportation.

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> So, that makes ~15 minutes standing around waiting for the bus and $2.25 spent on a fare, in order to save a 5 minute walk.

I did something similar the other day, and it wasn't because I was lazy. There's 2 key points that you miss, the existence of monthly bus pass and the fact that the bus was late. If you are close to a bus stop, and the bus is going to be there on time, you could save some time. Let say it takes 5 minutes in bus and 10 to walk, if he is in time, you saved 5 minutes, if he is 5 minutes late, you lost nothing, but if he is 10 minutes late, well, you just lost 5 minutes. The thing is, that's always true at any given point. After waiting 5 minutes, the same rules apply because you still have the 10 minutes walk.

In the end, I started walking about nearly 10 minutes later. I should have done it before because there was others stop on the way (and could have taken the bus at theses stops instead) but I neglected that. I did the right choice by about 30 seconds though, because I reached my final stop just before the bus. It was a 7 minutes walk.

I just don't think the US has a culture that considers feet to be a valid mode of transportation.

In some cases, I've found that to literally be true. I used to live a few miles from a large suburban mall (well, Castleton Square Mall is/was technically within the city limits of Indianapolis). I decided to walk to the mall one day, what the hell, good exercise. There were no crosswalks or signals to cross either the N/S nor E/W roads. No sidewalks. I recall no bike racks once you got there. It was as if (and I imagine literally true) there was no consideration given to any other means of transportation but a car. Other examples abound, but that one particularly stands out in my mind.

The irony of motorists' outrage on small towns banning car parking in the city and creating pedestrian only zones, is that they don't produce enough economic activity to let them park.

There's a reason why the most coveted retail real estate is in pedestrian accessible areas... not parking only strip malls.

> I just don't think the US has a culture that considers feet to be a valid mode of transportation.

it almost as if we've had decades of social and political lobbying to get people to walk less and use cars

I travel a lot for work and hardly ever rent a car, and I'm always appalled by the state of walking in areas around hotels. There may be plenty of restaurants within half a mile, but it's almost impossible to walk to them from your hotel. No sidewalks, no crosswalks, parking lots separated by huge ditches. I've actually ordered Uber Eats from a place less than half a mile away because there was no safe way to walk there.

And right now we're fighting a battle in my hometown (small town) where the city and a developer wants a hotel downtown and a group of citizens are fighting that it should be 5 miles away out by the freeway where there is nothing to do and you would have to drive everywhere. For some reason people actively and loudly enjoy not being able to walk from store to store.

The number of times I've seen people in the US wait for their Uber/Lyft to pick them up exactly where they are instead of crossing a road that would make it easier and faster for the driver astounds me.

People here seem to optimize for low effort more than their time. Same reason why people stand on escalators. If they cared about time they'd walk up it.

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