If the argument is that the car is both faster and can haul more things than on foot, then the middle ground is a bike. I use panniers and/or a bike trailer for big trips at the grocery store.
My wife generally does a weekly haul on the way back from an appointment that genuinely can’t be reached on foot. It’s more the “we realise at 10pm that we’ve run out of bread” type of small trips, particularly if it’s cold or rainy, where she’ll offer driving me. But by the time we’ve embarked, gotten there, parked in the narrow lot chronically full of idiots that wouldn’t know road etiquette if it smacked them in the face with an ID… yeah, the time-save there and back comes out to ten minutes, which really isn’t worth the stress and risk of accident to me.
When I listen to them telling me I can’t go to the corner store on foot, I feel like some sort of superhuman because somehow I can walk more than a km. “You walked all the way from the train station to here?!” they ask incredulously.
How far is your train station? Mine is 7-8min on foot. Gets me at least 15min of walking in my daily commute.
And if I’m in a bus or in a train, I can use my phone or laptop, work, or watch a series or a movie, whatever that I could do sitting at home if I would have “saved time by having a car”.
How far is your train station? Mine is 7-8min on foot. Gets me at least 15min of walking in my daily commute.
It depends. I moved in a city with a metro system and the closest station is 3 minutes away, but I have no commute for now and I’m only using trains a few times a month. If I have to go see my sister it’s about a 20 minutes walk to the central train station. Then once in her town it’s about 50 minutes to walk to her house. She often wants to come pick me up but even though it’s less than 10 minutes by car, she has to park at the station and wait a few minutes for my train, or I have to wait for her. Minutes are adding up and it can end up taking 30 minutes for both us of with a car anyway, so I prefer to avoid it and walk.
I’ll be honest: while I like not having to drive, our rail / metro services aren’t exactly paragons of punctuality, reliability, cleanliness or comfort. When you’re standing in a train packed with school kids, commuters, the occasional morning-drunk and the people who wanted to take the previous train (which was cancelled) as someone who’s claustrophobic, sensitive to noise and grumpy in the morning, being in a car by myself sure sounds a lot more pleasant.
I still think commuting by train and metro is better. I don’t have to find a parking spot, I don’t have to worry about gas, I don’t have worry about collisions in the hell that is our inner city traffic, the pricing is affordable (no thanks to certain lobbies bent on fucking up a good thing) and the environmental impact needs no mention.
But I can’t say that it scores high on enjoyability.
My wife generally does a weekly haul on the way back from an appointment that genuinely can’t be reached on foot. It’s more the “we realise at 10pm that we’ve run out of bread” type of small trips, particularly if it’s cold or rainy, where she’ll offer driving me. But by the time we’ve embarked, gotten there, parked in the narrow lot chronically full of idiots that wouldn’t know road etiquette if it smacked them in the face with an ID… yeah, the time-save there and back comes out to ten minutes, which really isn’t worth the stress and risk of accident to me.
How far is your train station? Mine is 7-8min on foot. Gets me at least 15min of walking in my daily commute.
This comment was written on a train ;-)
It depends. I moved in a city with a metro system and the closest station is 3 minutes away, but I have no commute for now and I’m only using trains a few times a month. If I have to go see my sister it’s about a 20 minutes walk to the central train station. Then once in her town it’s about 50 minutes to walk to her house. She often wants to come pick me up but even though it’s less than 10 minutes by car, she has to park at the station and wait a few minutes for my train, or I have to wait for her. Minutes are adding up and it can end up taking 30 minutes for both us of with a car anyway, so I prefer to avoid it and walk.
I hope you enjoy not being in a car!
I’ll be honest: while I like not having to drive, our rail / metro services aren’t exactly paragons of punctuality, reliability, cleanliness or comfort. When you’re standing in a train packed with school kids, commuters, the occasional morning-drunk and the people who wanted to take the previous train (which was cancelled) as someone who’s claustrophobic, sensitive to noise and grumpy in the morning, being in a car by myself sure sounds a lot more pleasant.
I still think commuting by train and metro is better. I don’t have to find a parking spot, I don’t have to worry about gas, I don’t have worry about collisions in the hell that is our inner city traffic, the pricing is affordable (no thanks to certain lobbies bent on fucking up a good thing) and the environmental impact needs no mention.
But I can’t say that it scores high on enjoyability.