Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

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> and start walking everywhere instead of driving.

This sounds nice until you actually look at most of America. Cities are designed around cars. I'm in a rather walkable city and the nearest grocery store is a mile away. That's not too bad, but other places I've lived it is 5+. Buses are bad (hour+ between pickups) or non-existent. It gets difficult to do all kinds of chores, visit the doctor or whatever. Even using a bike my grocery store shopping becomes a multi-hour experience that I have to do more than once a week where a car is 30 minutes and once every week because I can carry more. The experience is completely different in a city where I would rather actually walk than take a car. I don't think this is an uncommon experience either. What I'm trying to say is that it isn't great to just tell people to start walking but rather to recognize the design and incentives places by that design. The burdens that it creates. If you want people to walk more for their commutes then you need to design cities for walking. I've lived in many places in America where sidewalks are non-existent. If you live in these places and walk you either have a death wish or a DUI. But rather, build it and they will walk.

>This sounds nice until you actually look at most of America. Cities are designed around cars.

Right, and that's the problem. These cities are a product of choices that Americans have made over many decades, and now they're paying the piper.

>If you want people to walk more for their commutes then you need to design cities for walking.

No, Americans need to choose this for themselves, but they don't and they won't. They don't move to places like this, they don't demand it of their elected officials, they instead just buy big SUVs and move into subdivisions. Americans have chosen this lifestyle, and now it's costing them dearly.

You can walk/bike/bus to a store and then order uber back to carry all the bags.

Have you visited the U.S.? Suburban sprawl has made it a 1-2 hour walk one-way to a grocery store in many places (if you can walk there at all). In many places there isn't even a sidewalk.

I lived in CA, AZ, NV, NC, FL, NJ and NY, and visited a dozen of other states. There was always a large grocery store I could walk or bus to.

Visit middle America. Specifically, visit The South. You'll find that many regions in The South do no have sidewalks. If you're also only visiting major cities then you are likely not to see these differences in architecture. It is easy to form a selection bias. No one here is saying that there aren't plenty of walkable cities in America, but we are saying that you'll find a substantial overlap between non-walkable cities and obesity. If you don't visit rural America, you won't see what we're discussing. Or don't attempt it.

Since most people are familiar with California I'll provide this reference which breaks it down by county. First graph is adults, second is low income children 5-19, and third graph is low income children 2-4. You will notice how the high obesity rates highly correlate with regions that are difficult to walk around in and are more rural.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percentage-of-Adults-in-...

As another analysis, Not Just Bikes talks about this topic quite a lot. Here's his episode on strodes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM

Sure I've being to rural America and I know what you are talking about. But only one in 5 Americans lives in rural communities, vast majority lives in an urban setting. I was just suggesting in my comment that one can use uber to haul groceries.

Yeah, go watch the Not Just Bikes video and you'll see that what he's talking about isn't rural. But of course, you won't really see the issues unless you try to walk. When I was 19 I was living in Orange County (CA) and my car was in the shop. What was normally a 15 minute drive to work turned into a 3hr bus ride. I probably would have saved 15 minutes by walking, but these are the design differences. You probably wouldn't notice the difficulties unless you actually attempt to walk.

Anecdote time: I currently live in Texas, the closest grocery store is a hour walk. While living in Colorado it was a hour and a half, and in Florida it was 2 hours, all of these where easy 5 minute trips by a car and an excursion by foot.

Not to mention that all three of those states have major portions of the year where being outside that long can actually be dangerous. Either through dehydration and heat stroke (especially considering that on pavement temperature is higher) or through freezing temperatures (and potentially frozen over sidewalks).

Americans are so delicate. Frozen sidewalk oh my G-d! Tell that to Finns.

If it was a 2 hour by foot, assuming an average of 3 mph walking, that's 6 miles away. For that to be a 5 minute trip by car you need to drive 72mph.

Reasonable on the interstate but as your driveway (nor the store entrance) are directly on an interstate, there has to be at least some stretch of slower driving bringing the average down, so the speed on the interstate section would have to be much higher to bring the overall average speed to 72 mph.

You're assuming a straight line and constant speeds. While this is naive for both situations the error will not average out.

Let me give a direct example. I pulled up google maps and what is a 10 minute car prediction (2.8 mi) is also a 54 minute walking estimation (2.7 mi) and a 17 minute bike estimation (2.8 mi). Also, 33-43 minutes by bus fwiw

> I pulled up google maps and what is a 10 minute car prediction (2.8 mi) is also a 54 minute walking estimation (2.7 mi)

That does change the numbers; 10 minutes by car being 54 minutes on foot sounds a lot more realistic than 5 minutes by car being 2 hours on foot.

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