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Comment by sscarduzio | Hacker News Reader

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sscarduzio·

> not really the kind of place you would need to walk to

As an European, the amount of cringe on reading this sentence went through the roof.

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Fellow European here, and also an OpenStreetMap editor who maps a lot of warehouses like what the article describes is presently at one end of the bridge and “not really the kind of place you would need to walk to”. Even in a European context, I wouldn’t consider consider that Grainiger facility any significant destination for people on foot.

I agree that walkability and the culture around cars and walking is abysmal in the United States.

However, I should clarify that this particular location is primarily a warehouse for industrial equipment for use at the airport. Most of its business is from trucks that use the dock. It would be great if the area was more walkable, but if we made it more walkable we would not prioritize this specific business.

(Context: I am the author of the article.)

Plenty of places in Europe are not in places that you "would need to walk to."

And yet, walk to them you still can

You can walk to the same sorts of places in American cities too...

Worst experience was at Stansted airport. We had a very early flight home so we decided we can drop off our car at the airport in the evening and stay at the Holiday Inn Express (worst hotel experience ever, but that's another story) ~500m away from the car rentals. There is no footpath at all. You would have to frogger over the airport access road after walking on the curb. So we had to take the bus from the rental yard back to the terminal and pay 5 pound each for the transfer bus to the hotel.

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