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Comment by indymike | Hacker News Reader

> The real problem is "why do people choose to drive when there are alternatives"?

Time is the answer. Very rarely, covering typical US population density to the routes and schedules allow people to get from point a to b in a reasonable time. I once tried to hire a person to work for our company who thought she could take the bus. To get three miles, it would take her roughly 3 hours and require her to change busses five times. In the end, spending six hours on a bus or waiting for one just wasn't worth it to work eight hours.

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This is almost always the answer. I’ve written up before “how does driving compare to transit for my commute?”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31723197

It’s not hard to understand why I’d choose to drive when there is an alternative (at least technically, if not practically).

I used to have a 3 mile walking commute and was almost always in a great mood, full of ideas and inspiration by the time I arrived at work or home. It took about 35 minutes each way.

probably twice as slow as driving, but 10x more enjoyable

3 hours to commute 3 miles is literally 1 mile an hour. about the speed of a baby's crawl

I was going to say "as opposed to a little less than an hour's walk", but in the US there is the question of how many 14-lane highways and Costco parking lots you would need to cross during that hour.

And no matter how we try to sell it, people will almost always prefer a 15 minute drive to a 30 minute walk, or even a 15 minute walk.

Hell, I could walk my children to school (it's a mile away) in freezing weather through a blizzard, but will I? I could lie and say I would, but damn that heated seat feels nice ...

I dated a woman from Uganda for a while and she said to me that she (and other Ugandan immigrants) Americans were crazy. Why would you want to walk anywhere when you have a car. She explained that back in Uganda, you had to walk everywhere and it was not a good life.

Also even if the right geography exists for walking, does the climate locally support it?

Under 50 outside, most folks just nope out, same with over 80 outside.

Heck, most people cannot walk three miles without breaking some sort of sweat in a temperate climate, so for work, you need to be presentable.

Also a three mile distance "as the bird flies" may be double that as the person walks or drives.

People, including me, are lazy. I could walk almost all the time, I don't.

I could make up excuses, but I'm just kinda lazy.

The issue with this particular walk was surviving a four block jaunt though the worst neighborhood in town.

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