More for folks from walkable environments, my question is: would you walk an hour and 15 minutes to go to say, the library?

3.7Km

It is more like 40-50 minutes if you're in the town with actual roads, not just a corn field.

would you walk an hour and 15 minutes to go to say, the library?

Walking more than an hour just to get to one place? No, unless walking is a sub-goal. You know, the weather is nice, no tasks for today...

Would I? Depends on the day, the weather, the mood.

Would I regularly? No, I would either take public transport or the bike.

Would I need to? Also no, I live in a mid-sized city with many libraries and the closest one is 20 minutes walk away, the main one is some half an hour walk away in another direction. Access to municipal facilities was a key element in my decision of where to live.

I think that, because cars didn’t dictate the layout, things ended up being naturally closer by, such that long walks would be fairly unusual within the city.

Walk? No. I would cycle there. Get some bike bags so you can bring some books back.

That's biking distance boss

As a long time (former) NYer, my maximum walk length is about 20m. Anything further than that and I'm taking public transit. The exception is when it's a nice day out and I want to walk, in which case it's just until I get tired

I am from Denmark where the biking infrastructure is also pretty good, so I will almost always take the bike if I'm going somewhere that is further than 1 km away (~.6 miles).

But that is just if I'm going somewhere -- taking a 4 km walk just for the sake of the walk and getting some fresh air (especially when the weather is nice) is quite normal here.

If it's free time and I don't have any appointments yes. If I have to be there regularly and as appointmemt, I would use public transport on the way there and walk the way back.

A reasonable amount of time would be 15min-30min

Longer than that there needs to be transit

A walkable environment also means good public transport.

That's too much for walking. I would take a bike in that case.

Here's what I consider common:

1. Walk 10 minutes to the train station
2. Get to the city center while scrolling Lemmy on your phone.
3. Walk in the center to visit some fancy stores. Maybe like 15-20 minutes in one direction.
4. Buy some specialty coffee, fancy kitchen knives, Bialetti rubber rings or whatever.
5. Walk back to the station: 15-20 minutes.
6. Battery is nearly dead, and I forgot to bring a charger with me. I guess I'll just stare out the window.
7. Walk back home: 10 min.

In total, that's going to be like an hour, but it's divided into multiple parts. Walking that much in just one direction is something I would prefer to avoid. If the library is a 60 min walk away, that's the same as like 12 bus stops or 15 minutes while sitting in a bus. BTW that 15 minutes includes walking at both ends of the journey. I would definitely choose public transport over walking in that case.

If the destination is just 15 minutes walk away from your house, that's perfectly normal, and not a problem in any way. If it's like 20 minutes away, I would begin to consider using a bike or maybe even a bus.

I'd bike it. 2.3 miles should only be a 45 minute walk for a normal person unless there's bad stop lights (assume ~20 minute miles). On a bike it's less than 15

Walkable means all you need is in reasonable walking distance.

I wouldn't consider my neighbourhood to be particularly walkable as it's a suburb (in Europe) but my library is about 15 mins walk away.

Sometimes the amenity you need isn't in that walkable range, but cycling is a great alternative.

In general no

However, a sunny Sunday, walking 1h to do something may be part of the fun.

For distance above roughly a km, I use bicycle or even bus/train

In NYC everything is within like a 15 minute walk, including the library

Yes. I would but no it would not take that long. I walked to and from work 3 miles for awhile and it was about 45 mins. A neat thing with walking is that the time is very consistant. If I walked pretty much as fast as I could and was lucky on street lights and such I could almost make it in 35 minutes but if I took my sweet ass time it was hard to get to an hour. If I was taking one hour and 15minutes I should be able to get to a library that was 5 miles away. I have regularly walked to my current library in recent times and its about a mile and a half away but I have not really kept track of how long it takes me.

In my city, there are enough libraries that few if any residents are that far from one (I’m a block away from one myself).

In theory, I’d walk that far if the library had a rare book or something else unique I wanted to see; but if I just wanted a place to read I’d go to a café, and if I wanted a generally-available book I’d go to a bookstore. (I figure most books worth walking that far for are worth owning.)

2.3 miles wouldn't take me an hour and 15 min. More like 45 min one way, walking 3.5 - 4 mph.

I would not walk that regularly for the library. I would bike or more likely drive due to time, weather, and some roads between my home and the library not really being suitable to walk/bike safely the whole way. My immediate neighborhood is bike/walk friendly, but as I go out 1 - 2 miles and further, they are very much car roads not built with cyclists and pedestrians in mind.

If the library is the all day activity then sure! Great start and end to it.

No, but walkable places would probably have public transport access as well? If so I'd take the bus. I think I generally consider 15-20 minutes to be "walkable" if I need to go often (train/metro stations, grocery stores). For the occasional trips I'd consider 1 hour walk one way. Anything longer I would probably skip or find alternative ways to get there (including taxis/ride shares)

If that’s the round trip, yes. I do that daily. But one way? No.

Probably not. And no, I've done maybe an hour, but more likely 45 minutes to a library in a car centric city, and now somewhere with public transit I don't think you're ever more than a half hour walk from one

This is part of why I'm so vocal about increasing walkability. There's a cascading effect with increasing walkability as more and more is easily walkable less people need cars and there's more demand for walkability and mass transit solutions.

The fact that I've lived in cities (including major ones) where the public transit is a bus that comes every hour and I've lived where it's faster to take the train to go to a lot of places. If transit sucks, only the poor take it. In many places the bus is treated as welfare not mass transit. It can't improve until the area is willing to invest in distant returns. Not investing however will eventually hit growing urban areas with worse and worse conditions and traffic

I wouldn't walk any distance for a library.

But even it was a place I actually wanted to go, 10 minutes walking distance is about the maximum. For anything more there has to be a tram (or at least a bus).

Nah that's too much. Most I did regularly was going to a big mall, 2km away, about 25min walk

If it's a nice library sure

No, and my closest library is closer to 15 minutes away.

Maybe? Does seem a bit much. I already walk about 40 mins to get to work and that's at the higher end of what most people would walk.

But I would maybe do it if there were other things near that library that I need to go to. Have multiple destinations in mind for a longer walk like that.

EDIT: The library by me is about a 5 minute walk for what it's worth. Same for groceries & other stuff.

Grew up in a small town, the library was about 15 minutes walk. Used to go there three times a week. I miss those days.

If you ride a bike it would only be about 15 min each way.

I can, and have in the past, it's not that big of a deal, but it's not something I do regularly. Here's the thing, 4km takes about 1h walking, 30min by bus/tram, 20min by car (then another 10min finding a place to park), or 15min by bike. This is why bikes are so ubiquitous in European cities, you can get to places usually much faster than by public transport, and sometimes even faster than cars since they have to do weird paths and skip entire neighborhoods.

I normally would take public transport for such distances, mostly because I don't own a bike and sweat more than I'm comfortable with when I ride one, and don't mind the extra 15min of listening to music.

I don’t do walks longer than 20 minutes unless it’s for pleasure, thankfully the bus can get me most places I want to go beyond that. The terrain also makes a difference, I’d be less inclined to do 20 minutes uphill or across multiple freeways or something.

If it’s more than a 20 minute walk I’m biking, if it’s more than a 30 minute bike ride I’m driving, if it’s more than a 40 minute drive I’m not going.

No

A walkable city has libraries in every alternate neighborhood. So one is generally at most 1~1.5km away. But anything more than ~800m, I'm taking the bus anyway.

I live in a walkable European city.

My nearest library is 5 minutes away, there's a bigger library maybe 20 minutes away, and for anything further I'd take public transport.

It has been observed through history humans have been willing to spend up to half an hour each way on their daily commute. It doesn't matter if they are walking, biking, driving, flying, or something else, half an hour is the typical budget. Some people do go much longer (transit often allows for little longer if it is otherwise good enough that you can do something else while riding) , but that half an hour rule tends to stand across all cultures. Anyone who has farther to go will move.

That is daily commutes though. People often lived in a village near their field, but every few weeks would make the much longer trip to the town (city?) where there is a bigger market day. You don't do this every day, but for a once or twice a a month trip it can be worth it.

So back to your question is this a regular daily trip to the library - half an hour is the most you get, so you need to have multiple locations in all but the smallest towns. If this is however the big central library with a special collection of some sort people will make a 2 hour walk every few weeks if there is something special you cannot do at the local library.

Realistically I'd aim for a small library within 15 minutes for everyone because shorter distances makes it more likely people will go. You should try to have basic market places in the same location: basic groceries, a couple cafes, a few other shops, doctor and dentist offices.... That is the basics everyone wants close to home in one "central location" so it becomes habit to walk there a few times a week after work. People might go elsewhere to "costco" for their main shopping, but when you just need a cup of sugar this is close enough to send a kid alone while you finishing supper.

I live in the US and even my walk to the library isn't that bad. Ive done walks that long or a bit longer as a novelty or to get exercise, but in general no, about half an hour is about as long as I "normally" like to go without looking into a bus or something.

I walk 1,5 km in 10-15 minutes (depends on if I am alone or not), so yes I would walk that. But I like walking, I can suggest walking as a way to hang out haha

Last time I lived in a city, 15m is where I'd take the bus instead.

Very much depends on my motivation, my schedule and the weather. Walking much more than half an hour feels like a fair distance, and if it's unpleasant weather then I'd be tempted to take a bus or train partway.

But if it's nice weather and I've got plenty of time, walking an hour to go to a museum or whatever would seem perfectly normal.

Not really.

I may do a walk like that if I incorporate the walk as a leisure. But if I have to just be in a place I won't be walking more than 30-40 minutes to get to it if there's a fastest more convenient way.

It's gonna be real annoying for future me with arthritis.

Nope. That’s would be about the whole of my daily free time just walking over there and back. As I’m aging time is becoming the absolute scarce resource :-(

No. I would walk ~5-20 minutes to a bus/train station that would take me there.

Edit: for < 4km I would walk. Why does Google think that would be such a long journey in terms of time (which my first response was based upon)

I usually run that kind of distance on a e scooter. Faster, less noise and pollution.

People talking walkable cities forget that cars move more than just people. And people don't stay in one living spot all the time. No modern city works without the logistics moving goods in and out and peoples stuff from and to their homes and businesses.

So you can't just remove all the streets and make a denser neighborhood. You need alternative solutions for logistics. I work in rail and I can tell you there is too many people starving in the world, but not for a lack of food but for a lack of logistics infrastructure to get the food to them in time.

Me personally I love underground rail networks and pneumatic tube delivery, but as an engineer i know about the weaknesses of these systems. For now that remains a dream.

Today, my longest walk was 6.8 km. Took about 2 hours, but I had frequent stops as I was collecting kids from their schools and taking them to their respective sports clubs. When I have to go to the office, I run commute, 8 km each way. My watch says that my average step count for the past 7 days is 20,109 per day. I may be an extreme case, but walking 3.7 km to the library would be so routine I wouldn't even think of taking a bus.

I will sometimes walk up to an hour or so to go somewhere but that's more occasional, for something I need to do regularly 30 minutes is the upper end. Above that, I would usually look at public transports, bike, or car options

1h15 for 3.7 km sounds quite slow though, I would expect closer to 45 minutes for that kind of distance around where I am

I've been walking 3 miles uphill to get to uni every day and it makes you feel so much more accomplished when you do it. I live in a pretty car centric city but there are pavements the whole way there so it's not too bad.

I used to walk an hour and a half to get home from university, but I bussed to get there so I could sleep later and not be too sweaty when I arrived. I believe this would hold true for a library, as I tend to use that time to reflect on what I learned and plan out things.

That said, I'm an outlier; most people won't walk more than an hour, or even 30 minutes, unless I promise them a fun stop on the way or something.

Yes, when i was a piss poor student I walked home from the booze shop because I missed the bus.

No. I'd not do that anymore. I don't have the free time and I prefer other kinds of exercise.

I used to live about that distance from my work. I only walked it occasionally, if the weather was nice, I had the time to spare, and a little extra energy. Generally I took the bus.

I think 30 minutes is about how long I’d walk to get somewhere before considering public transit or driving.

That's almost what it takes for me, so yes.!

What kind of path takes 75min for 3.7km? In a normal environment, this should be doable in 40 minutes.