I was recently in Europe & came back to the United States with a renewed sense of hatred for cars, single-family zoning, & our awful public transport. Cars especially continue to steal our space, time, health, sense of community, & money.
In Bern (Switzerland), for example, there's trams/streetcars for short trips in the most populated parts of the city; there's (ice? electric?) motorbuses for trips around the rest of the city; and trains/rolling stock for trips to other cities/countries in Europe. All of these methods are timely, clean, & affordable. The sense of freedom this provides is so incredibly liberating. The sense of community from all these shared spaces wonderful, and also entirely absent from the average North American lifestyle. The quality of life is genuinely incomparable.
Sorry, to clarify using "walkable" as a word to encompass good public-transportation as well. I can walk to the subway, and get somewhere 6.2 miles away easily then walk to my final destination (something I do frequently).
From where I live to where I work is 8km. That takes somewhere between 19 and 23 minutes. 23 minutes on the days when there was more than 3-4cm how snow on the road. I occasionally take the scenic route to work. About 14km and a little more than half an hour.
I do this every day. Regardless of weather. It saves me a lot of time for the simple reason that this both represents a mild workout and getting myself to work.
On an ebike that distance is reasonable. On a regular bike it is possible, but not reasonable. I have a 7 mile trip to work, I have used a regular bike for it, but it takes too long and so I wouldn't do it often. On my ebike it is a reasonable trip to work, my truck isn't that much faster (and is much harder to drive)
Well that's the point I think. In practically all of the US you can't even take a sidewalk where you want to go. It gets even worse if you want things like walk signals or to avoid huge intersections, or even mass transit at all.
Not only that, our built environment is uninviting to walk in because it's built for cars. When have you ever walked by a parking lot and said "Oh my god, that parking lot was amazing, I want to spend time around it"? Yet we require by law parking lots to be built everywhere in America. We have legally compelled property owners to build something ugly.
Thanksgiving is coming up. Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year. Drive around, notice how on the busiest shopping day of the year, most commercial parking lots still aren't full.
> Thanksgiving is coming up. Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year. Drive around, notice how on the busiest shopping day of the year, most commercial parking lots still aren't full.
Sounds heavenly. But in reality, my wife (who actually likes going out on Black Friday, I don't know why) will be circling the lot waiting for a spot, any spot, even at the outer edge. It's nuts.
"Practically all of the US" includes nowhere I've lived, and I've moved around a fair amount. Some places are worse than others, but sidewalks are very much a thing more often than not.
Practically all of the US includes almost everywhere I have lived except for major cities. Especially in the Midwest and ESPECIALLY in the South walking to get groceries is a death wish.
It can include mass transit too. For a practical example, 10km covers all of Washington DC proper if you start at the center, nearly all of which is walkable/bikeable/transit-able.
Rural areas too. I made the mistake of walking down to the store when I lived in rural Colorado. A Truck almost turned me into a paste when it blindly took a turn.
Once I got a car, I became pretty unwilling to walk anywhere. Grocery store is 3 blocks from my house. I haven't walked in years. I would micro mobility though if there were a safe way to store the scooter.
In Bern (Switzerland), for example, there's trams/streetcars for short trips in the most populated parts of the city; there's (ice? electric?) motorbuses for trips around the rest of the city; and trains/rolling stock for trips to other cities/countries in Europe. All of these methods are timely, clean, & affordable. The sense of freedom this provides is so incredibly liberating. The sense of community from all these shared spaces wonderful, and also entirely absent from the average North American lifestyle. The quality of life is genuinely incomparable.