Library: 5 or so miles

Convenience store: 1mi

Supermarket: .75mi

Bus stop: .25mi*

Train station: 20-30mi

Park: 2mi

*This stop may be commuter times only … the stop exists but I never see the buses. Next closest is at supermarket.

I’ve been more in-city and the only thing nearby by a gas station. Everything else was 1mi+… Nearest supermarket being 6-7mi.

Middle West mixed city surrounded by suburbs area. The closest corner/convenience store is about a kilometer, full grocery was 3 kilometers but another opened about as far as the corner store. A sporting goods store, some clothes shops, a couple restaurants, movie theater, and fast food places within a 15 minute walk. If I moved into a house in a burb most of that wouldn’t be possible to be that close though because they basically zone the whole mile blocks for residential and school only instead of mixed commercial and residential.

It isn’t just that things are too far to walk, it’s that American car companies have made it part of our culture to own and drive, and it’s unpatriotic to do otherwise. That causes a severe lack of public transportation and sidewalks and bike lanes. So because of all this, I have to drive a mile through my neighborhood to get to a 7-Eleven that would be a quarter mile if I walked.

Based on the small town where I grew up:

• convenience store: 2km
• nearest chain/big supermarket: 5km
• bus stop: what bus?
• park: 10km (but there are hiking trails within 1km)
• train (metro) station: 5km
• library: 5km
• long distance train station: 20km
• my dad’s daily commute when I was growing up: 140km (that’s 140km each way, 5 days a week. 1200km of commuting each week. He did this with a combination of car, bike, and train. It took him about 3 hours each way.)

Note that a lot of the roads don’t have sidewalks so even if you want to walk it can be kinda dangerous depending on time of day.

Based on cities I’ve lived in:

• convenience store: 300m
• chain supermarket: 800m
• bus stop: 500m
• train (metro) station: 1km
• park: 1.5km
• library: 1.5km
• big supermarket: 2.5km
• long-distance train station: 2.7km
• my current commute: 3km

The cities tend to be a lot more walkable, but you still need to take the car or train to get to things like by the bigger (and cheaper) supermarket and other stores. The train is slow and unreliable (sometimes it’s faster to walk than take the train) so cars are much more popular.

An interesting data point in this discussion is to look at the list of countries in order of population density and see just how far down the list the US is.

We have a lot of people, some big cities, some major institutions, and a huge economy, but we also have a LOT of space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density

• To the nearest convenience store: 1.3km (small supermarket)
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 2.25km (Trader Joe’s)
• To the bus stop: 321m (busses 30 minutes apart)
• To the nearest (public) park: 1.1km
• To the nearest big supermarket: 2.89km (Safeway)
• To the nearest library: 1.3km
• To the nearest train station: 1.8km

Straight-line distance to Golden Gate Bridge: 11.6km

Nearest grocery store is a little over 3 miles. Libraries about four and a half miles. Nearest passenger train is about 200 miles away. I think there’s a bus stop about half a mile away but I don’t know if it’s a full-service one.

Depends on the place like everyone else has said.

• To the nearest convenience store: .3 mi
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 1.1 mi
• To the bus stop: .3 mi
• To the nearest park: .5 mi
• To the nearest big supermarket: 1.1 mi
• To the nearest library: .5 mi
• To the nearest train station: 30 mi

I’ve personally lived in places where the closest convenience store was 2.25 km, and the grocery store was nearly 18km, as well as places where a convenience store was literally a part of my building, and grocery stores were walkable distances.

The U.S. is enormous and varied. Take a look at truesizeof and compare the U.S. and Europe (don’t forget to add Alaska and Hawaii - they won’t be included in the contiguous states). Consider how different London is from rural Romania.

Walking distance is only part of this equation.

We have no sidewalks and I would need to cross a 6 lane interstate if I were to go to the “closest” anything.

Walking?

5 minutes to cafe for toast and coffee, or the closest corner store/gas station

10-15 minutes walk to the closet big grocery store, or pharmacy, better corner store/gas station, also to roller skating and bowling, a jewelry store, like 15 churches, lawyers, medical supply, doctor offices, a hospital, a bank, fast food and small independent restaurants, lots of stuff.

20-25 to work or to the good grocery

It’s certainly not London!!! But if you are inside a mid-sized city there is stuff within easy walking distance, and more within short drive (5 minutes) My husband came from the suburbs and that’s a different story - house farms ringed by roads too dangerous to cross, everyone drives everywhere. He used to think of “close” as anything a 15 minute drive or less! Not anymore.

83 miles from Disney World, that’s probably the closest international landmark, lol. But maybe 4 miles from the beautiful Tampa Theater, which ought to be an international landmark.

Depends on location, but I don’t think I’m too bad.

• To the nearest convenience store (more than that, really; a drug store and mini grocery store): 400m
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 2km
• To the bus stop: 100m (but the bus doesn’t go many places
• To the nearest park: 600m (a small park, a much larger one 2km away)
• To the nearest *big* supermarket: 6km
• To the nearest library: 2.5km
• To the nearest train station: 2km for local rail, like 25km for rare intercity trains

it takes half an hour to walk (one-way) to the nearest store

One thing that deserves special note is the US, aside from being more spread out in general, has a lot more sprawling suburbs with downtown areas…if you live near the downtown, then everything is walkable, but maybe 20% of a towns population in any given suburb will be that close, and thats a generous estimate.

As an American who has lived in the EU, walking / biking like you can do there just plain is not possible for MOST of the US. As other have mentioned, if you live in a major city, or in the center of a suburb, then it may not be so bad.

On a similar note, this sprawl is the same reason that public transport on the EUs level isnt viable in the US…there would need to be too many stops and too many routes to get decent coverage, and when you math it out, having cars is the most economical decision for most of the country.

So first of all, the US is big and diverse, if you hop in a car and drive from New York to LA without stopping, taking the fastest route, mostly on major highways, averaging out to something like 60+mph (about 100 km/h) you’re still going to be spending just about 2 days in the car.

And in between, you’re going to see a little bit of everything, mountain, plains, forest, farms, huge dense urban cities, towns small enough you can barely even call them a town, suburban sprawl, massive industrial facilities, you name it you’re going to see it.

Overall, if you live in an urban area, the situation may not be too bad, cities are somewhat walkable, there’s public transportation that will usually get you fairly close to where you need to go, there may even be protected bike lanes, etc. although the situation will vary wildly from one city to another.

It will even vary from one part of the city to another. You can have large sections of the city where there’s no real grocery stores or other places to get your basic necessities, and you’re pretty much limited to whatever you can get from corner stores, bodegas, convenience stores, etc. (mostly pre-packaged and processed foods, and if you’re lucky maybe a couple pieces of fresh fruit) and if you want anything more than that you’re probably looking at taking a few hours out of your day to walk a significant distance to a store or take public transit that may not go exactly where you need it, may be slow, expensive, or just a pain in the ass to deal with, etc.

Getting out into the suburbs, it’s again kind of a crapshoot. There are some walkable suburbs, with wonderful shopping options, there’s some that are a maze of residential developments and gated communities that come off of major roads with no sidewalks or even shoulders worth speaking of and you’re taking a significant gamble trying to walk anywhere from there. There may be little or no public transportation and if there is it may not be going anywhere you need to go, or be convenient to get onto

Personally, I live towards the rural end of the suburbs, about an hour or less from a major city depending on traffic.

Damn near everything I could ever want or need is within about a half hour drive, and most of I commonly need is covered within about 15 minutes.

If I don’t have a car though, my options drop off significantly. I’m looking at an hour walk one way to get to a grocery store, mostly along a long winding road with little or no shoulder and few streetlights. The only things I would really feel safe to walk to are 2 pizza shops, a small hardware store, a bar, a CVS, and gas station/convenience store, those last 2 are going to be about a half hour or longer walk, and along that winding road, but it’s a stretch that at least has a half decent shoulder and some lawns to walk on for most of the way.

If you have a bike, there’s a decent bike trail that will get you to some more shopping options, but it’s about an hour’s ride one way.

If you need to catch public transit, you’d have to walk about 2 hours to catch a bus, that line basically runs straight up and down a main road between the city and a larger, urban-ish town further out in the suburbs. There’s not many options to transfer to anywhere else along the way but there’s a lot along that route so if you can get to that bus most of your needs will be covered, but it doesn’t run super frequently and it’s not going to get you anywhere in a hurry.

Getting out into rural America, you have some small towns that are functionally self-contained, with their own grocery stores and other shopping options in-town within walking distance. Your options are limited but for the most part everything you really need is right there in town.

If you don’t work in town though, and often people in these areas don’t, they may be involved in farming, logging, oil/natural gas, construction, etc. and may work many miles from town, you’re pretty much screwed if you don’t have a car, or at least can count on carpooling with a coworker.

There’s other small towns where there just isn’t much of anything at all, maybe they have a gas station and a liquor store, and if you need anything else you’re SOL, in some cases you may be looking at an hour or more drive to get to anything else so you can forget about walking.

Regardless of where/what kind of area you find yourself in, transportation between cities is often going to be an issue. You can probably catch a Greyhound bus or maybe Amtrak or similar between most major cities, though you may have to get a little creative with figuring out your route, but if you’re trying to get to the smaller towns in between you may not have much luck.

There are, of course, nearly as many exceptions and special cases to everything I said as there are individual towns and cities.