This woman took the bus for a one mile hike while she was in college? Like, in her twenties she looked at the prospect of walking for just over a kilometer and a half, a distance you can apparently cover by bike faster than by bus, and she went "nah, I need mechanical help for that".
Do you take the escalator, or do you walk up the stairs ?
What a weakling you are for choosing the escalator.
Edit :
It seems that the irony got lost : most people just take the escalator for a mere 50 steps, just as most people would just take the bus if it's convenient. So all people in this thread shaming her are quite ridiculous.
As for me, I take the stairs instead of the elevator daily (5th floor) and wouldn't get on the bus because I have strong social anxiety.
Walk because its clear and I can get up it faster than waiting for the morons on the escalator that don't know how to use steps. Also I often have a bike with me and its easier to just lift that and walk up the stairs.
Or, if it's so busy that you can't comfortably do that I take the stairs.
I also take the stairs instead of the elevator at home because it's only a handful of floors and man, I am already old, decaying and extremely out of shape. My knees would fuse solid otherwise.
No, but unseriously, why shame people for being complacent? Maybe semi-seriously; like, 35% seriously, at best.
Edit: And maybe more seriously but still mostly casually uncaring, you never know what lives other people leave. Also, a campus shuttle is actually amazing if you think about it. Personally, I'd rather be able to do a nice busride to class, but I'm well aware that I can't waste valuable sleep time with that. And, risk being stinky around other people? No thanks. Also, having to deal with upkeep, storage, and security of a bike? Blegh. It would be cool though to live in a culture that both had the bikes and infrastructure, and didn't have the thievery.
Also, you gotta remember, a lot of the US is very far apart and is so imbued with car culture and infrastructure. Plus, we, like the rest of humans, just can't deal with our problems, and just had another major setback existential challenge.
That was meant to be ironic but it got lost it seems ;-;
What I meant was that, If you see stairs next to the escalator, most people just take the escalator. Same as if a bus is going where you are going to, most just take it without thinking.
I wanted to show that shaming her for taking the bus was ridiculous, just as shaming people taking the escalator instead of the stairs was ridiculous.
Man, since you want me at 35% serious I'll come clean and say that when I poked at Americans I genuinely didn't think the response would be "greentext isn't real and she didn't exist but also she is my cousin and I know for a fact she was disabled and she NEEDS that bus". I don't know if I should own the trolling and not acknowledge that the only part of it that worked was the splash zone and not the direct impact.
But also, the OP explicitly says the distance was one mile. I know the US is big, but I didn't realize it was big because universal expansion had made one mile larger than it is elsewhere. I guess that explains a lot.
It also explains a lot that "a bike chain" is "upkeep, storage and security" and that a ten minute walk is wasted sleep time that makes you stinky.
Alright, alright, let me get back to being somewhat real for a second. I've been to the US a bunch and I don't have a driver's license, so I walk everywhere and it's genuinely shocking to me both how poor walking infrastructure is, but also to what degree Americans consider anything not directly next door to be "not walking distance". I get that it's cultural, but it's also deceptively soul crushing. I refuse to leave the house unless it's on fire and I still find spending time in many areas of the US physically distressing. And Canada, too, don't think that having competent health care and a few extra busses means it's different over there.
Fwiw as far as the reasonableness of taking a bus 1 mile, that's 16 minutes at a brisk walk. Less at a very fast walk. Depending on traffic, number of stops, etc., a bus could take about 10 minutes to go the same distance, probably less. So you're definitely saving time, even if it's not a huge amount. You're also saving effort and sweat, depending on how fast you go and the weather.
When I was in uni, I would regularly walk the 1.2 km to campus. But I would catch a bus the 1.8 km (remembering that a mile is 1.6) to the shops. Because it's a hot unshaded route with a significant uphill. Plus I had to carry the shopping. Whereas the walk to uni was flat, shady, and I rarely had to carry more than just a laptop. And also there literally wasn't a bus that could take me.
So yeah, depending on how all the specifics fit together, I don't see anything wrong with taking a bus 1.6 km.
I went to college in Breda (HIO at Hogeschool Breda, later known as Avans Hogeschool).
If I were to take the bus from the train station to the school building, I'd have been late to class too often.
I walked to class, those 2km from the station to the school at the Lovendijkstraat. Only when it rained did I take the bus and accepted the fact I'd be marked tardy.
I mean 1 mile is still a 20 min walk or so. A bus can cover it in a couple of minutes and you won't be exhausted, especially if carrying a heavy bag of books, it's uphill, it's raining, it's snowing, it's exceptionally hot, there are no sidewalks, you have to detour significantly to cross a body of water, highway, or other hazard, you have a mobility impairment, or you just don't want to waste 40 minutes of your day walking when you could jump on a bus and spend that time doing other things. Now if it's a choice of waiting for a bus that only comes every 20-30 min and walking, sure.
I think you're misunderstanding the idea here: I have a bus pass, but will often walk rather than wait for a bus if the distance is rather short. However, if I'm about to walk somewhere, and see a bus pull up that's headed where I'm going, I'll often just hop on-hop off to get where I'm going faster.
Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. If I pass a busstop and I see that the bus will be there in a few seconds, I'll take the bus. I roughly know the busschedules around where I work (there's no bus where I live), so I usually know if a bus is coming by looking at the clock.
American infrastructure is so heavily skewed against pedestrians in pretty much every city that isn't NYC. While large college campuses tend to be more pedestrian friendly, it still isn't great. And since most Americans aren't walking a mile everyday, when you then couple that with a backpack with materials needed for two different college classes like textbooks, laptop and charger, or notebooks and pens, it can be difficult for some ti walk that distance for whatever reason.
I don't know why people are still surprised that the country designed to punish people who are too poor to afford a car has so little pedestrian and cycling.
It could be cold, windy, or really hot out. Or she doesn't want to walk a mile with all her school stuff, or she doesn't have great mobility. Also there are plenty of 30+ people going to college
It could also just be made up, maybe stop looking to get outraged
Lots of universities have free busses that you can just walk on, no pass or anything needed that loop around campus. They're so frequent and convenient that using them is often just the routine, even if it's not literally faster. It's easy to get into the habit of waiting for the bus on cold days, and you keep it in the summer.
I beat it consistently on my 10 mile commute. In fact, on a crappy weather day (lots of snow), I barely missed the bus, so I caught up and rode it the rest of the way.
Buses aren't fast, but they are warm and dry. It takes ~20 min to get from the stop near my house and the transfer I'd take to work, which was ~6 miles (~10 km). That's ~18mph (~30km/h), which is doable on a bike. My whole commute took about 40min, 30 on a good wind day. Taking the bus with a transfer took about 45 min.