Ask Lemmy

I walk 1,5 km in 10-15 minutes (depends on if I am alone or not), so yes I would walk that. But I like walking, I can suggest walking as a way to hang out haha

If that’s the round trip, yes. I do that daily. But one way? No.

No, but walkable places would probably have public transport access as well? If so I'd take the bus. I think I generally consider 15-20 minutes to be "walkable" if I need to go often (train/metro stations, grocery stores). For the occasional trips I'd consider 1 hour walk one way. Anything longer I would probably skip or find alternative ways to get there (including taxis/ride shares)

Probably not. And no, I've done maybe an hour, but more likely 45 minutes to a library in a car centric city, and now somewhere with public transit I don't think you're ever more than a half hour walk from one

This is part of why I'm so vocal about increasing walkability. There's a cascading effect with increasing walkability as more and more is easily walkable less people need cars and there's more demand for walkability and mass transit solutions.

The fact that I've lived in cities (including major ones) where the public transit is a bus that comes every hour and I've lived where it's faster to take the train to go to a lot of places. If transit sucks, only the poor take it. In many places the bus is treated as welfare not mass transit. It can't improve until the area is willing to invest in distant returns. Not investing however will eventually hit growing urban areas with worse and worse conditions and traffic

Everyone has their own definition of “walkable”. For me that’s not, plus it’s getting to the point where the books i’d likely get would be annoying to carry. But also do you mean literally walkable or “don’t need a car”. The latter includes transit and micromobility

I walk to my library but it’s less than ten minutes. Especially since they put up parking meters, walking ten minutes is more convenient than finding change or feeding a profiteering app company.

Unfortunately the best part of my towns downtown is a mile away so less convenient. Most of the time I’ve lived here I’ve decided to drive the mile but since pandemic I’ve been far more likely to walk. I recently went to a diner where a newly opened trail made it a nice walk despite it being over a mile.

And the definition of walkable changes over time as well. As a young adult I lived in Boston and considered essentially everything walkable. While I was also a big user of transit, they tended to be too slow and crowded when you can walk instead. Most of my driving was to move my car for street cleaning or snow removal

I can, and have in the past, it's not that big of a deal, but it's not something I do regularly. Here's the thing, 4km takes about 1h walking, 30min by bus/tram, 20min by car (then another 10min finding a place to park), or 15min by bike. This is why bikes are so ubiquitous in European cities, you can get to places usually much faster than by public transport, and sometimes even faster than cars since they have to do weird paths and skip entire neighborhoods.

I normally would take public transport for such distances, mostly because I don't own a bike and sweat more than I'm comfortable with when I ride one, and don't mind the extra 15min of listening to music.

2.3 miles wouldn't take me an hour and 15 min. More like 45 min one way, walking 3.5 - 4 mph.

I would not walk that regularly for the library. I would bike or more likely drive due to time, weather, and some roads between my home and the library not really being suitable to walk/bike safely the whole way. My immediate neighborhood is bike/walk friendly, but as I go out 1 - 2 miles and further, they are very much car roads not built with cyclists and pedestrians in mind.

Yes. I would but no it would not take that long. I walked to and from work 3 miles for awhile and it was about 45 mins. A neat thing with walking is that the time is very consistant. If I walked pretty much as fast as I could and was lucky on street lights and such I could almost make it in 35 minutes but if I took my sweet ass time it was hard to get to an hour. If I was taking one hour and 15minutes I should be able to get to a library that was 5 miles away. I have regularly walked to my current library in recent times and its about a mile and a half away but I have not really kept track of how long it takes me.

In NYC everything is within like a 15 minute walk, including the library

If the library is the all day activity then sure! Great start and end to it.

In my city, there are enough libraries that few if any residents are that far from one (I’m a block away from one myself).

In theory, I’d walk that far if the library had a rare book or something else unique I wanted to see; but if I just wanted a place to read I’d go to a café, and if I wanted a generally-available book I’d go to a bookstore. (I figure most books worth walking that far for are worth owning.)

Depends on the weather but probably not. I would walk an hour to a concert, to keep from having to park the car, but library, no. 2 miles doesn't seem like it should take that long though - 2 miles is the distance kids have to have between their house and the school before the school bus will get them, so I had to walk that twice a day for 7 years of my youth, it didn't take an hour.

If you ride a bike it would only be about 15 min each way.

No. I would walk ~5-20 minutes to a bus/train station that would take me there.

Edit: for < 4km I would walk. Why does Google think that would be such a long journey in terms of time (which my first response was based upon)

Not really.

I may do a walk like that if I incorporate the walk as a leisure. But if I have to just be in a place I won't be walking more than 30-40 minutes to get to it if there's a fastest more convenient way.

Nah that's too much. Most I did regularly was going to a big mall, 2km away, about 25min walk

Grew up in a small town, the library was about 15 minutes walk. Used to go there three times a week. I miss those days.

No. But that's because I work there.

Maybe? Does seem a bit much. I already walk about 40 mins to get to work and that's at the higher end of what most people would walk.

But I would maybe do it if there were other things near that library that I need to go to. Have multiple destinations in mind for a longer walk like that.

EDIT: The library by me is about a 5 minute walk for what it's worth. Same for groceries & other stuff.

I don't go to the office often, but when I do, I usually walk. The distance is 4km and it takes me 40mins. It's not like I walk often, most days I get less than 2k steps, but I do walk fast.

It is up to you (unless the infrastructure is an ass) to make it there in 40mins or 2 hours

No, and my closest library is closer to 15 minutes away.

It has been observed through history humans have been willing to spend up to half an hour each way on their daily commute. It doesn't matter if they are walking, biking, driving, flying, or something else, half an hour is the typical budget. Some people do go much longer (transit often allows for little longer if it is otherwise good enough that you can do something else while riding) , but that half an hour rule tends to stand across all cultures. Anyone who has farther to go will move.

That is daily commutes though. People often lived in a village near their field, but every few weeks would make the much longer trip to the town (city?) where there is a bigger market day. You don't do this every day, but for a once or twice a a month trip it can be worth it.

So back to your question is this a regular daily trip to the library - half an hour is the most you get, so you need to have multiple locations in all but the smallest towns. If this is however the big central library with a special collection of some sort people will make a 2 hour walk every few weeks if there is something special you cannot do at the local library.

Realistically I'd aim for a small library within 15 minutes for everyone because shorter distances makes it more likely people will go. You should try to have basic market places in the same location: basic groceries, a couple cafes, a few other shops, doctor and dentist offices.... That is the basics everyone wants close to home in one "central location" so it becomes habit to walk there a few times a week after work. People might go elsewhere to "costco" for their main shopping, but when you just need a cup of sugar this is close enough to send a kid alone while you finishing supper.

If it's a nice library sure

By the way, count the actual time it took you to walk that. From personal experience, Google Maps always says a considerably higher number

Today, my longest walk was 6.8 km. Took about 2 hours, but I had frequent stops as I was collecting kids from their schools and taking them to their respective sports clubs. When I have to go to the office, I run commute, 8 km each way. My watch says that my average step count for the past 7 days is 20,109 per day. I may be an extreme case, but walking 3.7 km to the library would be so routine I wouldn't even think of taking a bus.

Nope. That’s would be about the whole of my daily free time just walking over there and back. As I’m aging time is becoming the absolute scarce resource :-(

Very much depends on my motivation, my schedule and the weather. Walking much more than half an hour feels like a fair distance, and if it's unpleasant weather then I'd be tempted to take a bus or train partway.

But if it's nice weather and I've got plenty of time, walking an hour to go to a museum or whatever would seem perfectly normal.

I live in the US and even my walk to the library isn't that bad. Ive done walks that long or a bit longer as a novelty or to get exercise, but in general no, about half an hour is about as long as I "normally" like to go without looking into a bus or something.

It's gonna be real annoying for future me with arthritis.

We do that few times a year but bike is designed for these distances

Yes, when i was a piss poor student I walked home from the booze shop because I missed the bus.

No. I'd not do that anymore. I don't have the free time and I prefer other kinds of exercise.

I will sometimes walk up to an hour or so to go somewhere but that's more occasional, for something I need to do regularly 30 minutes is the upper end. Above that, I would usually look at public transports, bike, or car options

1h15 for 3.7 km sounds quite slow though, I would expect closer to 45 minutes for that kind of distance around where I am