I do this with light rail. Takes 6 minutes with slow walking included. It's pleasant.
Especially in the winter. I live in Norway, so if I use a car I wait for the engine to warm up before driving. (It's better for the engine.) This and removal of ice and snow easily takes more than 6 minutes. I'm really glad I don't have a car.
If you are not disabled in anyway and still need to take a transport bigger than a bicycle to buy basic groceries, the design of the city you live in is fundamentally broken.
These “take a train” crowd think that everyone in every city and every town has a subway system or even a functional bus system. It’s like the bicycle people who insist that I don’t need a car, I can just strap my kids to my back in winter and drop them off at school before cycling to work and stopping for errands and groceries on the way home! So easy! /s
If I didn’t NEED a car I wouldn’t drive one, and that applies to most people. But for some reason everyone on here is a 20something city kid with easy access to public transit
It's actually called zoning reform. Bring back neighborhood grocery stores you can walk to. Before I experienced it, I never thought about how convenient it is to walk less than 5 minutes to a grocery store almost every day and do little grocery trips instead of bit multi-bag struggles.
The fact people want to get in a car in order to get groceries is beyond me. I'm in Australia, where car brain is also very prevalent, but with many urban places good for walking and PT.
I live close to the shops, and go there multiple times a week because it's literally right there. Driving and parking? Nah, I'm good.
Many cities at one time had trolley service which did local point to point connection. Then they were forced out because there was more profit in growing car dependency.
The best is when the grocery stores are so close that you don't need a car or a train. Japan does it right. You can always walk to at least one grocery store.
This dude jokes but when I lived in Harlem I’d take the subway to Columbus circle Whole Foods as it was significantly easier than commuting to the east side on 125 to pathmark.
If you have to take a train to the grocery, that's a failure in local planning and a business opportunity. That said, not every store has everything and I, too, have taken a train to the grocery store for fancier/rarer things.
In some parts of rural Japan, we also have a grocery truck carrying staples and things you requested the last time they came from the actual store. This is a huge lifeline to some rural elderly people, but I don't see why it couldn't be more broadly applied in other areas.
Trains also work to get other traffic off the road too. It solves congestion for everybody, not just you. That way when you do have to drive a car, there are fewer of them on the road.
something a lot of people miss is, that some people have to shop for more than 3 or 4 people, when I grew up we were 5 plus a somewhat big dog, you can't really do weekly shopping without some kind of help under these circumstances
I use public transport to get everywhere I can, which is pretty easy where I live, but having 4 full shopping bags on a tram sounds like a horrible experience