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I live in a metropolitan area and can walk to many stores within a 30 minute radius. (First supermarket is less than 5 minutes away).

But there is the added complication of weight. I can’t buy food for a week without driving there. Nor can I go and buy a TV by just walking to the hardware store.

3 comments

30 minutes is on the longer side, but I think part of the point of walkable grocery runs is that you don't buy a week's worth of food like you do in a car. When I lived in Paris, I'd happily pop out to buy whatever I needed for a single meal. I had so many grocery stores within a 5-minute walk. Now that I'm in SF, I buy for the week (on my bike with panier bags) because the grocery stores I like are far from my home.

It's an infrastructure thing. With the right regular/cargo bike or even better, an ebike/cargo ebike, 30-40kg of groceries per run is super doable.

> Nor can I go and buy a TV by just walking to the hardware store.

Do you buy a TV more than once every 5-10 years? You can rent a small van or whatever.

You definitely need infrastructure for that. Biking infrastructure in North American cities is.. not great. Definitely viable in some of the EU ones though.

Personally owned folding shopping carts exist.

Used to do this in Belgium. Still less convenient than driving, and kinda annoying to use during a Canadian winter.

And again, more limited space.

I commute by walking (1h per day) and typically avoid the car when possible, but for groceries there’s just no way I’d go back to walking to and fro.

For those to be effective, you do need good walking infrastructure.

I'd grab one of those except for the fact that I don't have a sidewalk connecting me to the grocery store. Totes end up working better for me as a result.