I mean, a car comes with a trunk, where you can put your shopping in. Having to walk 1300m or 15' worth of shopping can't be good for the local businesses.
Found bikers basically spend as much as drivers... they spend less per trip but make more trips.
Having to carry stuff a bit is not a huge problem, that's what personal shopping trolleys are for.
Complains that I remember.
- People from outside the city has problems to move apparently. They say that there aren't parkings enough in the city borders, so they have to go for one that's roughly in the center, through very slow traffic lines. That induces them to go less frequently.
- Businesses like bars, chocolate shops and so on flourished (leisure oriented), but others like hardware stores, furniture stores, two law firms, and a Cinema closed.
Imagine that you were going to the hardware store. It's either impossible to park near it https://www.google.es/maps/@42.4264585,-8.6406022,3a,41.3y,1... or difficult/forbidden/very slow traffic https://www.google.es/maps/@42.4304871,-8.6417988,3a,42.3y,1...
The answer is you shop differently, and the shops are set up differently. I remember one residential area in a Spanish city where there were huge numbers of small fruit and vegetables shops, almost kiosks, which popped up during the morning, there was one just round the corner from where I was staying, and probably 5 within a 5 minute walk. You can literally just go downstairs and pick something up, so that’s probably a third or a half of the shopping weight on your doorstep. Then there were small supermarkets dotted around, and you’d just pick things up on the way back from the bus stop. The whole concept of a huge fortnightly shop is based on a car culture.