Current Events > Most suburbs are walkable, imo.

(+) Yeah! (+)

People are just lazy

Not with all the wild pitbulls around mauling people

Nah, there are walkable towns and then there are actual suburbs which are just houses for five miles

Dakimakura posted...

Not with all the wild pitbulls around mauling people

Fear mongering working full effect.

I mean, I been approached by pitbulls. But I don't live in the suburbs and I also cane out fine. It's definitely a thing. But if you stay in your house over it, you're most likely just looking for excuses not to go outside. The world has never been 100% baby proofed. If not pitbulls it would be crazy drivers or the shooting that happened a month ago.

I prefer to walk in places where drivers are used to pedestrians. I think that rules out most suburbs.

The suburb I live in and the one I grew up in were walkable. Suburbs that mostly consist of huge parking lots and 4-6 lane roads/stroads are not.

I like to say that you cannot truly know a town until you walk it. The smells, sounds, and sights are lost to you when you drive quickly past.

Ive walked a lot of different places in a number of countries and am amazed at what I see.

probably the longest I have walked directly at once on pavement to pass through an area is 3.5 hours though. After that my feet start to not feel good.

when Im hiking though I have done 8 to 10 hour hikes. Those are good days.

depends exactly how far from the city you're talking

most of the roads in the area I grew up in don't have sidewalks and it's only like 20 miles from the capitol

Theyre not, not really

i can walk .5 mile to about 20 different restaurants, a couple convenience stores, 5+ music venues, 5-10 breweries, 5+ parks, events all spring/summer, etc

being able to walk a mile to the strip mall that has a couple chain restaurants and a dollar store isnt close to the same thing

The area I grew up around has never had proper sidewalks save for a few short spots, and a kid got hit and killed by a truck in the 90s. It's *walkable* I suppose but it doesn't have a lot of positive attributes going for it.

TheGoldenEel posted...

Theyre not, not really

i can walk .5 mile to about 20 different restaurants, a couple convenience stores, 5+ music venues, 5-10 breweries, 5+ parks, events all spring/summer, etc

being able to walk a mile to the strip mall that has a couple chain restaurants and a dollar store isnt close to the same thing

This.

TheGoldenEel posted...

Theyre not, not really

i can walk .5 mile to about 20 different restaurants, a couple convenience stores, 5+ music venues, 5-10 breweries, 5+ parks, events all spring/summer, etc

being able to walk a mile to the strip mall that has a couple chain restaurants and a dollar store isnt close to the same thing

This. I can walk a mile north or south and hit a strip mall but it's a two mile walk to the proper shopping/night life section of the area. It's a three mile walk to the rail station to leave the area. There are buses but the scheduling is very hit and miss depending on the time of day and where you need to go.

This is also in Texas, so if you want to be presentable when you get somewhere, walking is not an option for most of the year.

doshindude posted...

The area I grew up around has never had proper sidewalks save for a few short spots, and a kid got hit and killed by a truck in the 90s. It's *walkable* I suppose but it doesn't have a lot of positive attributes going for it.

This is also a problem. There are places and times I won't walk because lack of infrastructure puts me at the mercy of awful drivers.

Still, this is all more than what some have and it suits my current lifestyle, so I have no issues but being in an actual walkable city is fucking magical and my ultimate goal.

Unless you live in Chicago

My friends live in the suburbs and there isn't even a sidewalk and it's like 1-2km to the nearest anything

lol

Homeless_Waifu posted...

Unless you live in Chicago

What could you possibly mean by this?

The thing I miss the most about SF is just how walkable it is. Living is Louisiana we need a car for absolutely everything. I live literally right across the street from a grocery store but it's blocked by a dumbass highway that has no bridge or crosswalks.

The downtown part is much more walkable but it's ran down and not kept up. If I find out that there's studios/apartments there I'll live there idc how ran down it is.

Not needing a car is a luxury I somewhat miss.

This topic has me remembering this article:
https://www.vox.com/23178764/florida-us19-deadliest-pedestrian-fatality-crisis

The crosswalks are so far apart its easy to see why some people decide to make a run for it. After Main Street, we dont see another crosswalk until Grand Boulevard in Port Richey 1.7 miles away. That means someone looking to get across the street between the two might need to walk an extra mile or more to find a safe crossing. The speed limit is 45 mph through New Port Richey, but Marlowe says its not uncommon to see people doing over 60 mph, making the road essentially a freeway with residential and commercial development on either side. US-19 was designed for speed, and they meaning drivers use it that way, he says. The tendency seems to be to just go as fast as you can. At night, the sheer size and width of the road make visibility a challenge (even with LED streetlights, which are meant to improve visibility), making it even more deadly for pedestrians who try to cross.

The suburb I was living in until last week had:

20 minute walk to the NJ Transit bus to take me into Port Authority (and the last bus is at 1:30 am)
15 minute walk to the NJ Transit bus the opposite way to take me to Garden State Plaza
30 minute walk to the train station to take me to Secaucus Junction and Newark Penn
35 minute walk to the supermarket in the next town that I worked at (there's a closer one that was a 20 minute walk but I didn't like that supermarket)

Plus anything in between for restaurants, small shopping malls, and anything else I could want. Our house was directly in the middle of residential areas, in PoGo the map showed very few Poke Stops or gyms.

Antifar posted...

This topic has me remembering this article:
https://www.vox.com/23178764/florida-us19-deadliest-pedestrian-fatality-crisis

I moved into a town close to this (somewhere near Tampa) and I've also been thinking about that road ever since I read that article. The apartment complex I'm in is off of some kind of highway with like 6 lines per direction, it looks so dangerous and I couldn't imagine driving through it. I've walked across them in the past few days and you have to press a button to make the walk sign turn on and you have 60 seconds to cross the road (it takes 40 seconds to get from 1 side to the other).

Puglia77 posted...

The suburb I was living in until last week had:

20 minute walk to the NJ Transit bus to take me into Port Authority (and the last bus is at 1:30 am)
15 minute walk to the NJ Transit bus the opposite way to take me to Garden State Plaza
30 minute walk to the train station to take me to Secaucus Junction and Newark Penn
35 minute walk to the supermarket in the next town that I worked at (there's a closer one that was a 20 minute walk but I didn't like that supermarket)

Plus anything in between for restaurants, small shopping malls, and anything else I could want. Our house was directly in the middle of residential areas, in PoGo the map showed very few Poke Stops or gyms.

Yeah see this is what I was talking about when I made my post

if the closest thing is a 15 minute walk (.5 mile) to the nearest bus station that you then have to spend some amount of time riding to your actual destination, your neighborhood is not walkable

TheGoldenEel posted...

Yeah see this is what I was talking about when I made my post

if the closest thing is a 15 minute walk (.5 mile) to the nearest bus station that you then have to spend some amount of time riding to your actual destination, your neighborhood is not walkable

Sure if I wanted to go to Manhattan, it's not walkable because it's not possible. But if I wanted to get a haircut? 15 minute walk. Wendy's? 20 minute walk. High school? Just up the street. Anything on the main street was a 20 minute walk, like McDonald's, the movies, lots of restaurants, Dunkin Donuts. The nearest bus station was in front of the high school but it goes a different route.

Puglia77 posted...

Sure if I wanted to go to Manhattan, it's not walkable because it's not possible. But if I wanted to get a haircut? 15 minute walk. Wendy's? 20 minute walk. High school? Just up the street. Anything on the main street was a 20 minute walk, like McDonald's, the movies, lots of restaurants, Dunkin Donuts. The nearest bus station was in front of the high school but it goes a different route.

See
TheGoldenEel posted...

being able to walk a mile to the strip mall that has a couple chain restaurants and a dollar store isnt close to the same thing

I can walk to like 2 dozen places in under 5 minutes, haircut, entertainment, food, fast food, etc. a half mile minimum to get to a few fast food places is not what people consider walkable

TheGoldenEel posted...

See

I can walk to like 2 dozen places in under 5 minutes, haircut, entertainment, food, fast food, etc. a half mile minimum to get to a few fast food places is not what people consider walkable

Sounds more like a city than a suburb.

distance aside, the lack of sidewalks in an attempt to dissuade poor people from moving in also negatively affects walkability.

Puglia77 posted...

Sounds more like a city than a suburb.

Yeah, this is what Im saying

suburbs are not walkable

Not if they're gated communities

Walkable suburbs exist (Berkeley comes to mind) but I feel like truly walkable suburbs are definitely not the norm. Especially when many of these suburbs have significant areas lacking sidewalks and have large tracts of single family homes that are removed from any sort of commercial center

Also, some suburbs do have actual "downtowns" that may be walkable for those living near, but unless the rest of the town is like that I'd hardly call them walkable

Should also note that I dont even live in a big, particularly dense city. The options arent, suburbs, or downtown Chicago or whatever.

plenty of walkable neighborhoods in cities that have lots of single-family homes. You just dont have a huge yard wasting a bunch of space

suburban sprawl is bad for everyone

being able to walk and being able to walk somewhere you'd actually want to go to are completely different things.