In the USA I have a car and live in a somewhat suburban area. I can get to a superstore and get whatever I need within a 10-20 minute drive from my home. For example, I can get to a grocery store in 5 minutes.
Last time I went and took the surprisingly good public transport by US standards, it took me about an hour to run the same errand that takes 20 minutes at home.
How is the experience for you if your city has good public transportation? Or do live as close enough to everything you need that you don’t really need public transport for errands or groceries?
Thanks for your thoughts and perspectives!
35 comments
Groceries and supermarkets are usually within a walking distance in cities. More rural parts can have stores half an hour away by car.
I have 3 supermarkets and 3 groceries within 5 minutes walk from my apartment building and I don’t have a car. The only time I use public transport is when I go to work and that’s like 15 minutes by a tram.
US zoning laws are rather untranslatable to European standards. There is no just houses and/or just stores. It’s a blend of everything really. Huge malls next to the historical center riddled with apartments here and there.
I live in a suburb sbout 30km from Stockholm, I could easily walk to six different supermarkets.
Though I tend to do the shopping on my way home from work, where it doesn’t add any time to my commute as I sync it between bus departure times, I don’t have to think about it, it just works.
Though when I go swimming on the way home it is usually quite a bit of waiting as I manage to screw up the sync twice every time.
I live in the centre of the city.Palermo is a fair sized city,about 700,000 people.
More or less everything I need,I can walk to.Shops,services and my usual main workplace (I work in different sites though).Nearest supermarket is 2 minutes walk,nearest bakery about 100 metres and so on.
I don’t have a car,but I have a scooter which I use fairly often to save time when I go to more distant places (usually for work).
I don’t use public transport much.Its not great here,but it exists…I can take a bus to get to some places (like the beach for example) and there is also a small metro system.
I don’t think I’ve ever taken public transport for groceries. Walking a maximum of 5 minutes I have multiple supermarkets as well as other shops (butchers, vegetable stores etc). I live father from the center now so if I want to buy clothes at any bigger store I’ll need a 10 min bike or bus ride. Although I could still buy clothes, electronics etc. in smaller stores a few minutes walking from my house.
I can reach at least 10 grocery stores within 10 minutes of walking. All my different doctors within 20 minutes by public transportation or bike. There’s banks and a post office in walking distance. My gym is in walking distance. I can reach any store I need except maybe like big furniture stores (since those are on the outskirts of the city) within 15 minutes.
I actually own a car because I’m from a rural area and I need it there, but I pretty much never use in the city. It’s just way too annoying. Unless we’re talking about like a 2am fast food run when the streets are empty I can reach pretty much anywhere I need to go faster by foot, bike or public transportation than with the car because of traffic and searching for a parking space.
None of the places I’ve lived in have had more than a few minutes walk to a superstore. It takes around 15 minutes to commute with public transport currently. The worst commute I’ve had was 2.5 hours (to another city ~200km away), but even then I could work most of the commute time since it was in a train.
I live in a small town, 11k people, in the “rural” part of the country. There are 4 supermarkets within 15 minutes walking distance, a DIY store and some furniture store at 20 minutes and the city center 5 minutes. So public transport isn’t necessary for me. Smaller towns near me usually have a small supermarket and people drive here for the weekly grocery shopping. There are some busses there but they have many stops and take probably about twice as long as using the car.
The nearest big electronics store is in the closest big city (200k). That store is 48min and €5.80 one way by bus and 27min by car. Going to the office is 40-45 min by far and 1 hour 20 minutes with public transport. I need to run to the bus at the train station or you can add another 15 minutes.
I habe loved different places in Denmark. The most remote place was in a small house 4km outside a village with 250 inhabitants with no car for a year. The bus was running every two hours, I needed to walk 10 minutes to the main road to the bus. So grocery shopping would take me two hours. But I would do that on my commute in the afternoon there were easily at least 4 supermarkets or discounters within walking distance in the city where the bus departed.
I lived in a 3800 people town with 6 supermarkets/discounters available in walking distance.
I lived in Copenhagen with 10+ supermarkets within walking or biking distance.
In Germany i lived in a 25000 people city and there 3 big supermarkets and lots of discounters within walking/biking distance. But if I wanted to go to the biggest store it would take me 15 minutes by bus instead of 50 minute walking.
Yesterday had to run downtown Zürich to pick up some things. I spent 20 minutes in the store. 40 minutes round trip on the trains and 40 minutes walking and waiting on the trains. It would have taken double the time if I ran errands like I did when I lived in the US. Finding parking for me is the killer not so much the driving.
I only drive to the grocery store if it is pouring. Otherwise it is s pleasant 10 minute walk.
I live in a suburb about 10 km from the center of a 200k population city. I can walk to the two nearest supermarkets in about 10 minutes and a lot less by bicycle, in fact it has always been like that in all the five different places where I’ve lived. Even my parents who live just outside a small town in the countryside; nearest supermarket? 10 minutes on foot!
That’s not to say that I never take the car there, on the contrary, I usually go by car because I’m passing on the way to and from work.
I use public transportation probably about once a year, it’s not really worth it to take the bus to the city center, there’s still free parking if you know where to look and for the price of bus tickets for two adults (the baby is still free) I can park in the center for about four hours and get there about 10 minutes faster and more conveniently by car.
To respond to the question in the title; I could theoretically get to the two nearest supermarkets at about the same time by public transport as by walking, maybe even save a minute or two! But the bus only passes once an hour in either direction, with that and the price it really doesn’t make any sense.
When I still worked in the same city, I took the bicycle to work year round. It was about 7 km (4.4 mi) and on average it took 22 minutes on bicycle. It actually took longer in car, mostly because of rush hour traffic and the fact that it was about a km or two longer than on the bike. With public transport it was about an hour because I had to take a bus to the city center and change to another bus or stop half way and walk for 25 minutes. Because the bus only passes my house once an hour it was actually faster to walk unless I timed it with the bus, I did that once or twice when my bike had a flat tire.
England: I currently live in a big city and walking to the nearest large supermarket takes 10-12 minutes (Mostly depending on traffic light sequence as I’ve got to go across a 6×4 lane cross road, 3 lanes each direction E-W and 2 each on the adjacent N-S road).
My biggest issue is I have to walk past McDonalds and KFC to get there and back! It is a bit of a pain if I’ve left it too long and need to buy a lot but a large rucksack plus two heavy duty shopping bags does me fine (usually carry about 15-20kg home – most heavier stuff on my back).
When I lived with parents in the suburbs I worked at the big supermarket 30 minute walk away (10 min drive) but it was a really pleasant and very safe walking path into the main town centre. My mum would often do a big shop weekly with the car and I’d just bring back smaller amounts of fresher bits and bobs when coming home from work.
There were plenty of closer smaller newsagents/off licenses/corner shops where it was quicker to walk and pick up any emergency items usually for slightly more cost.
Edited to add: the supermarket where I worked I passed two tram stops on my walk, so could do the journey in about 15 minutes on a rainy day, but I really enjoy walking and watching the suburban wildlife.
Well I live in small village and don’t have a car, so I need public transport. It takes bus 20 minutes with all the stops to reach bus station in nearby small town(11 km). Than I got pretty much every supermarket(besides one) within walking distance(1-5 minutes). When it comes to other shops(butcher, bakery, confectionery store etc…) it’s pretty much the same(under 5 minutes for most).
Ofc depends on the type of errand, since shopping is usually fast, but stuff like visiting some sort of government office or going to doctor can be pretty slow.
Generally though what time you save by driving a car, you will eventually lose most of it since traffic + trying to find parking place(especially downtown) can be pain. Ofc car will almost always be faster, but not that much.
As everyone said, all the supermarkets are within walking distance. I am now talking about Macedonia and it capital which the whole city is like 20-30km wide, so it is something that’s totally different for a US citizen.
On the other hand I have used a public transport two times to do groceries and that was in Budapest, Hungary when I was a student. There are supermarkets and even small shops everywhere so you can easily do your groceries on foot, however being the broke students we were my roommates and I decided to go out of town to one of those Hypermarkets to buy week-worth products cheaper and that took us 1:30h commute only.
It takes about 7 min walk to the closest supermarket. It is in general faster to walk then to take public transport. If i take the train it takes 1 minute on the ride. I also have 2 smaler stores where you can buy food just around the corner.
I’ve got a convenience store at my doorstep (fucking [Żabka)](https://images.app.goo.gl/fF2K5fq6CcqW3m1e7).
5 minutes by foot I got good old remembering-communist-times [Mokpol](https://images.app.goo.gl/bEyMkM7YCDuE2YPQ6)
[Bakery (Putka) ](https://images.app.goo.gl/ZrLsD8fKtNR5JebZ8) is located 2 minutes from my flat.
Closest Vietnamese [quisine](https://images.app.goo.gl/d9iu1Q1CfdbE7aew8) as well as closest food by weight restaurants are around 7 minutes by food.
Closest bus stop is one minute away.
Closest metro and tram stop around 8 minutes by foot.
If I want to go to a bigger shopping mall it would take me 10 minutes to get into [Złote Tarasy](https://images.app.goo.gl/ttcZQAodzTEbLuxL6) or 20 minutes to [Westfield Arkadia](https://images.app.goo.gl/HXrMwrMMsjG8UT2x9) or Westfield Mokotów.
Yeah, Warsaw is pretty much great for commuters by public transport, at least for people living in the urban parts.
And I’ve got 450€/475$ rent for 2 room flat, so I guess I’m better off than dwellers in USA in that case too.
Depends on what errand. The closest supermarket is a 1 minute walk. The preferred one is maybe 15 mins on foot but 10 by public transport. There is a tram stop 2 mins from my house and the tram comes every 5 minutes or so.
This is me now living in a major city. But i grew up in a suburb until i was 24 years old and even then everything i needed with any kind of regularity was always easily reachable on foot, bike or by public transport.
Hence i dont have a car and am only now at age 29 slowly working on getting a drivers license, since i just never needed it. So i dont really know how long it would take by car, but it might well be longer.
I live pretty much on the outside of Zurich, but within a five minute tram ride (or 10-15 minute walk) I get to 3 different bigger supermarkets for doing groceries, two of them being embedded in a bigger shopping complex with gyms, pharmacies and stores selling furniture, clothes and the likes.
But usually I don’t do groceries as a seperate task. I usually hop off the tram at one of the malls when going home after work, go to the gym and then to the shops. All in one go. Honestly, PT here is amazing and I love it. I only need our car for certain tasks.
I live in a small village, which has a supermarket in the centre, along with a bio shop, couple of bakeries and a few restaurants and bars. Takes me less than ten minutes to walk there. If there’s something I need that I can’t get in the village, I can walk less than five minutes to the railway station or bus stop and go to the main town which is six miles away. We don’t have a car.
I live in a downtown part so everything is within 5-10 minutes of walking. Shops which are far away but we still use because favourite butchery etc. are like 20 minutes by public transport or 10 by car.
I live in a suburb of a smaller city (~100.000 people) in Western Germany and I have a car. I usually run errands on may way to/from work.
However, if I were to go shopping outside my usual route, I could either cross the street (10 m) where there is a small grocery store that covers most basic everyday needs.
The next large stores are all 3-5km away. Bus services run every 20 minutes and they approximately are as fast as a car (10-15 mins to get where I want). Bus stops are frequent and the walking distance to shops is short. Some even stop next to the parking place of such stores, so it’s competitive.
In the best case scenario I just arrive at the bus stop when the bus comes, so I don’t have to wait. In the worst case, well, it’s 20 mins.
So the total door-store-door time is, with public transport and in the best case:
15 + 15 min for getting to/from
30 mins shopping
5 mins for walking
Total time: 65 mins.
That’s also how long it would take me if I took the car.
However, that’s under ideal conditions, for normally you have to wait for the bus. Most of the time you’ll land halfway in between two busses, so it’s going to be another 20 minutes waiting.
Public transport: 65-85 mins
Car: 65 mins
Car is more flexible, obviously, but you also have to find a parking place, and that’s a real chore in cities like the one I live in. Plus it’s expensive.
So overall our public transport is competitive in terms of time and, if you have to pay for parking as a motorist, also price.
Without parking, the car is still cheaper.
However, there will be a flat rate ticket for public transport available from summer on. €49 per month for unlimited travel everywhere. That’s going to make public transport a lot more competitive.
I live in Rome, in a residential area that’s not too far from the city centre.
Everything I could need is within a less than 5 minutes walk from my apartment. There are 3 supermarkets, pharmacies, bakeries, hairdressers, some shops.
If I want to go into the centre, I can walk in about 30 minutes, or I can get a bus or tram in about 15.
I have a car but I only use it to go to work, and occasionally to go and see friends in another area of the city. Both I could also do with public transport but it’s much easier / quicker with the car
Right now – if I need to go to a public office or court, I walk, 10 minutes and I’m there since most of them are in the vicinity of my current apartment. I even have smaller hospital complex under 10 minutes a walk and main hospital complex right above 10 minutes of walk. Groceries – 2 minutes and I can choose from two small shops. Bigger groceries – 5 minutes of bus ride (or few minutes of walk but I don’t like to drag my bags for so long). The biggest store at the other end of the city – 15/20 minutes of ride with trolleybus (well can be longer if I go Friday after 3pm, the city is terribly jammed then). And if I want some specific thing from the local tiny shop, there’s many in walking distance.
I live in a city of a bit over 100,000 people – so relatively large by Swedish standards. From where I live it takes about 15 minutes to travel by bus to the city centre, including to the central train station. In comparison, if I were to walk to the city centre it would take around 40 minutes. It’s less than a five minute walk from where I live down to the nearest bus stop, and the bus leaves every 15 to 20 minutes until late at night.
If I need to go to the large shopping mall at the outskirt of the city, it takes a bit longer – it’s about a ten minute walk to that bus stop, and then about a 20 minute bus ride.
However, I also live less than a 5 minute walk from two of my city’s largest supermarkets, so I can do basically all of my everyday shopping there.
There is a supermarket on the ground floor of the building I live in, so it takes me around 2 minutes to walk downstairs. If I need a large supermarket, I take the tram there and back, that’s around 15 minutes each way. But I only go there a couple of times a year, there are maybe 10 supermarkets within 10 minutes walk from my home, much cheap and high end ones, and also lots of bakeries/butchers/ specialty food shops so I often go to them.
I live in what we would say was a suburb, it’s about 3 miles out of town. However it has a village centre – I think this is where European or at least UK suburbs are so different and why I didn’t get the “suburbs = bad” theme you see a lot on here.
I can walk to 3 different convenience shops, a post office, a small library, a few take away food places, a couple of sit in restaurants, a pub and the medical practice I’m registered at, within 10 mins.
If I need to do stuff like visit the bank, shop for clothes, take a train into London, have a selection of bars and restaurants, that’s a 20 min bus ride.
Location: Berlin South-East
Depends on the errand. For all shopping, including pharmacies and electronics, as well as for any business at the town hall or the library, I don’t need to take public transport, I can just walk for 15 minutes or cycle for 5. The distances are too short to make public transport meaningful.
To go to my GP, I need to take a bus for 20 minutes. Some other doctors I see are anywhere between 15 minutes by tram or 45 minutes by commuter train.
What is really great about Berlin is that it’s basically 6 villages in a trench-coat pretending to be one city. Unless you are trying to see specific individuals (as is the case with my doctors), then you don’t actually *need* to leave your “village” inside Berlin.
What you describe in OP is definitely the case where I originally come from, Cyprus. I did an experiment with public transport the last time I was there, and a 7 minute car trip ended up being around 2 hours by public transport (including wait times, walking from stop to stop for kilometres trying to figure out how the system works as the documentation about bus routes is not real-time and obsolete).
I think the main difference is that in the US, you zone big sprawling suburbs just for living, but with no commercial space intertwined at all – in Europe, that is almost unheard of. Suburbs would have shops, cafes, a supermarket and so on interspersed – sometimes in the same building as some apartments if you are getting more “in the city”.
It totally changes the game.
That depends a lot on where this errant is. If I just need groceries or to grab a pizza at our local pizzeria, I jump on my bike and get there in 5 minutes.
If I need to meet someone in the nearest town or do some shopping, it’s 5 minutes on bike plus 10 minutes by train (and then 3 minutes +/- to get to the main street), which is slightly faster than the car.
If I need to go to Copenhagen for some reason, the train trip can be 30-45 minutes depending on which part of Copenhagen. Depending on where in Copenhagen I then need to get, this can be roughly the same as with car or slightly slower
I live inPoland
going to a store, i go on foot. there are 2 stores and a big open-air market within 5 minute walking distance of my home.
I use the tram/bus daily to drive to school, and it takes about 30-40min.
the trams on big streets come every few minutes, the busses a little less often, so when deciding at what time to leave the house, i only really have to look at the bus schedule.
so i gotta say it works pretty good
Live in Istanbul, something 10 KMs(6.5~ Miles) away from what we could call the center. I personally never had a reason to use public transport, let alone a car for errands. Everything is just within walking distance of 30 seconds here.
The nearest shopping mall is 20 minutes of public transport away, though there are a few things they have that my block doesn’t unless I want to buy a computer or something.
With public transport alone? I’d say around two hours or so. Train and bus are alternating in my village. Every 30 minutes you can hop either in a train or in a bus. Unless it’s late evening or night. Then you’re fucked. The next German town doesn’t have public transport, so everything is by foot. It also takes longer to reach that town, compared to car. Which is why i got one for myself.
Alternatively, i could just hop over the border to an Austrian small town, about 5 km from me. Idk if there is a bus going there, but with the e-scooter or bicycle it takes about 20 minutes or so to reach it. So probably around an hour to do stuff if i’m quick.
For supermarket & stuff that I need everyday I just walk, everything is usually a 5 min walk. Also 5-10 min walk to a medical center if needed (for non urgent things) or pharmacy.
For other kind of errands it really depends, but nothing is usually over 30 min unless you live in a really weird place.
Outside of big cities cars are more common, but only for this kind of “exceptional” errands. You can have everything you need even in smaller cities without a car.
Always talking about urban areas, rural areas are another topic.
In London, to run errands around my neighbourhood, I either walk or cycle.
Grocery store, pharmacy, park, gym are within 5 minutes walking distance.
Doctor, dentist, DYI shops, restaurants, supermarkets, 15 minutes walk, or 5 minutes cycling. 15minutes on bus.
Big shopping centre with clothing shops, cinema, restaurants, etc. 20 minutes drive. 25 minutes on the bus.
Central London for everything, 30 minutes on the underground train (tube), 1 hour by car, plus 30 minutes and a kidney as payment to park.
I don’t need to take public transportation to go to the supermarket, the closest isn’t even 5 minutes away by walking and I have maybe 5 or 6 others within a 15 minutes walk. There’s also a farmers market about 10 minutes walk away where I buy most of my vegetables.
I think most people living in cities are at walkable distance of at least one supermarket here. In villages it will depend on the area but where I grew up for example there is one supermarket 5 minutes away by car (and there’s a good bike path to go there too) and maybe 5 others within a 15 minutes drive. It would take approximatively the same by public transportation but I wouldn’t do that in that village in particular because there are sadly only a few buses a day so it makes things complicated.
I just cycle or walk to run my errands most of the time. There are 3 supermarkets, a number of butchers, a greengrocer, a hardware store, a couple drug stores and a broad variety store within a 5 minute cycle ride from my home, so I don’t really need to take public transport. I don’t live in an urban area btw.
The only time I’ll ever use public transport for errands is for clothes shopping (although lately I just buy most of my clothes online or at the walkable-y close thrift shop) or when I need to buy something more niche (I can’t buy rolls of film where I live for instance). In that case I take a 15 minute train ride to the nearby small city and run my errands there.