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Comment by badtension | Hacker News Reader

Why can't they just walk or bike to their friends? 2-3 km walking distance is perfectly fine, bike extends that range significantly (10 km at least). This was the case for me.

Sorry if the question is naive, I don't live in USA.

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Because your friends can easily be 10-30 miles away and only accessible via shared roadways with 55mph road traffic. There are no cross country bike routes here.

Building around roads results in everything being pushed farther away and that includes other people’s homes too.

Fair point about shared roadways that probably split communities.

Do kids attending the same school really live that far apart? Seems like a very long distance, especially in a suburbian neighbourhood.

That is my experience in the East coast US. Here, the suburbs are very spread out, with amenities 15-20 minutes away by car. There are older suburbs where that is not true, but that's more of an exception. Housing in those older suburbs costs more than the newer more spread out developments and there are fewer of them than the newer more spread out ones.

Typically, those old suburbs were originally built around train stations or street car lines, which influenced their design. The newer ones were designed around access by car and zoning prevents any non residential land uses nearby.

it's incredibly ironic but I've lucked into a very bikeable community in a rust-belt state, we have extensive rails-to-trails here and in this situation the rails followed the main state (2-lane) highway, or vice versa. so I actually can bike to some things specifically thanks to rails to trails.

I see, thank you for explaining!

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