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Concerning waiting on the bus, as mentioned in the OP: If you use the same bus stop most of the time, you quickly learn all the times the bus arrives, and you can plan it so you hardly have to wait at all. For instance, I know it takes me about ten minutes to walk to the bus stop, and I know when the bus arrives (2:10, 2:25, 2:40, etc), so I don't have to wait more than a couple of minutes unless I'm just not paying any attention when I leave the apartment. Of course, it gets trickier when I need to take a different bus to another part of town, but most of them run every 15 minutes, so I never have to wait long. For me, it's well worth it to not have to own a car.
Not sure about busses where you live, but ours all have GPS in them. There's an app where you can find out where your bus is and when its projected arrival will be. You can also get this via txt if you don't have a smart phone, but I'm not familiar with how that works. Also - if you have a GPS phone, allow it to report on your current location and enter your destination in it, the app will show you all the busses within a 1/2 mi (or 1/4 mi if you prefer) radius that are going near there and how close they all are to you. It makes using public transit much more convenient!
I live in an uber walkable neighborhood and I find that this pretty much doesn't happen. I live so freakkin' close to the grocery store (3 blocks) that I have not found myself needing to 'stock up' - essentially in a neighborhood that walkable, the grocery store *is* your pantry. I generally only buy food for a few days unless there's a good sale on something. If I did find myself needing to buy 8 bags of groceries or something - I'd probably just call a cab.
LOL, anytime it rains here people think its a category 5 hurricane on the way and they stock up on water, canned goods and propane tanks.
Don't know if you have ever lived near the coast in areas where hurricane strikes but running to the corner to buy groceries is not always an option in these areas.
A couple of times a year many people HAVE to stock up. whether they live next to a grocery store or not.
Just because someone says they are stocking up doesn't necessarily mean they live far so they are buying in bulk. My first place was within a mile of Kroger, Randalls, Walmart, Target, and a few corner stores/mom and pops shops. But when everyone is buying up supplies, I can't just say the store is round the corner, if I need water I will just buy it when I am thirsty. I would be able to walk to the store, but there would be nothing to buy.
People also do it for financial reasons. I know some college kids buy carts of stuff to last months. Financial aid comes twice a year. gotta make sure you are not starving mid semester
When my wife and I go to the Target down the street, we usually do drive.
However, in Boston when we lived in Brighton we used to walk to Watertown (~3 miles away) to the Target and lugged our stuff home (this is also through a not very walkable part of the city, across a turnpike). We didn't really have much of a choice, though I wish I could have signed up for Zip Car
Dude, you're nuts! You should have taken the bus! Where were you going, Arsenal Mall or something? The 57 goes right by there!
Anyways, to the OP...I lived in Allston in Boston, about a five minute walk from a Shaw's Supermarket. It was far, far easier to walk than to drive. If I needed something small, I could go to two other convenience stores that were even closer.
As it was mentioned before, you need to take into account parking. Not just parking at the store...but trying to find parking when you get back too. In Allston, the neighborhood density tops 20,000 people per square mile, and much of that is street parking. That means if you leave, you're probably not going to be able to get that spot when you return. When I drove home for the weekend or something, I would usually have to park somewhere shady for a little while before a legal spot opened up. This required me to look out the window until 2, 3, or even 4AM, waiting for someone to move their car.
Dude, you're nuts! You should have taken the bus! Where were you going, Arsenal Mall or something? The 57 goes right by there!
Yeah, unfortunately it ended up being just about as much walking to take the bus. The 57 went more towards the Packards Corner part of Brighton IIRC, and we were closer to Cleveland Circle. Oh well... I guess you can say it was character building.
We did take the bus once, but to get back to our place you needed to transfer from the 86 to the 70 bus. The 86 was pretty reliable but damn that 70 bus never seemed to come.
As another poster mentioned, when you live really close to your grocery store, you don't really need to stock up in the first place. I find I mainly use the bike and trailer when I just happen to run out of lots of things at once, and then I also use that opportunity to stock up on certain items. Most of the time, I just visit the store every two or three days, buying a small bag of items I need, instead of making one big trip every week or two in a car, like I did when I lived in TN.
I do the same thing. I pass a market on my walk home from the train, so I stop in when I know I need a few things. If I stock up, I walk down there with one of these in tow:
Not sure about busses where you live, but ours all have GPS in them. There's an app where you can find out where your bus is and when its projected arrival will be. You can also get this via txt if you don't have a smart phone, but I'm not familiar with how that works. Also - if you have a GPS phone, allow it to report on your current location and enter your destination in it, the app will show you all the busses within a 1/2 mi (or 1/4 mi if you prefer) radius that are going near there and how close they all are to you. It makes using public transit much more convenient!
That's pretty slick, but I don't know if ours have that yet. I might check, but so far I haven't had any trouble using the buses here. They're almost never more than a couple of minutes late, and I'm never in a hurry so I don't mind even waiting 15 minutes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lammius
I do the same thing. I pass a market on my walk home from the train, so I stop in when I know I need a few things. If I stock up, I walk down there with one of these in tow:
I've seen a few people using those carts; they seem like a good idea. Sometimes I buy too much in the store and carrying it back home is kind of a strain, but I could always use a little more exercise.
I remember walking to grocery shop when I lived in Boston, it sucked, especially with that humid weather outside
Yep, the choices at my first place was the Whole Paycheck on Washington and Comm Ave or walk to the TJ's in Coolidge Corner or the Star Market on Beacon St.
Suuuuuucked in the summer for this California kid.
Of course the winter was equally bad because you would put on all these layers to get through the freezing cold, then bam, you are hit with the heat in the grocery store, and end up getting all sweaty anyways (this applies to all things, not just grocery stores).
And then on the flip side of that, the sun in Los Angeles in the summer is so strong that I feel like I have to change sides of the road to be in the shade. The many perils of walking everywhere...
To some Americans the thought of having to walk to get groceries, or do shopping, sounds terrible. Much better to spend time and money in a car instead of engaging in healthy activity.
I find that I use Miami Beach's shared bike program (Decobike) more than I drive my car. Since I pay a $15/month subscription fee for unlimited 30 minute rides, I use it all the time. Fortunately for me, there's a station right outside my building and one in just about every destination on the Beach including grocery stores, movie theathers, department stores, etc. In larger popular districts like Lincoln Rd., there are a mulitiple number of stations nearby. If I consider both how expensive parking is and how long it will take me to find a space, taking Decobike is faster and more convenient for most of my travel. I have three grocery options within a five minute walk: Publix, Fresh Market and Epicure. I can also take Decobike to each. However, I find that I combine my grocery shopping trips when I have to cross the causeway by car into Miami for another purpose like going to Home Depot or attend an event. All in all, I probably drive about 3000 miles a year in South Florida including visting friends in the burbs, hitting Ikea, going to an occassional event in Ft. Lauderdale or heading into the office for a required teleconference. For most everything local, it's by foot, by Decobike or a combination of the two.
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