I live close to the downtown core of my city and my daily commute is a 6 km (3.7 mile) round trip by foot. People seem to think this is exotic if not downright subversive, whereas they think nothing about sitting in a car for an hour a day and stopping off at the gym for a workout.
Note that I'm not in particularly good shape and a walk of this magnitude is not at all difficult. I arrive at work every day refreshed, alert and in a good mood, and I arrive home after work feeling the same way.
You couldn't pay me enough to take a job at which I was forced to drive, though I wouldn't mind cycling to work if the distance was too long to walk in a reasonable time.
I live close (<2 miles) to work/downtown and could technically walk, except for about two blocks in the middle of the commute that I would not feel safe walking in the dark alone. (I am female, maybe a man wouldn't feel this way)
Sometimes I ride my bike, which feels safer, if for no other reason than those two blocks go by awfully fast and an assailant on foot could not easily catch up to me, but biking feels like a lot more work than walking. I have to gear up, and carry my bike down the stairs from my apartment, and bike three stories up the parking garage for our office once I get there (the building manager hates bicycles, and so you cannot take them up the stairs/elevator). I also feel like one of these days I'm going to be hit and killed in that garage. I feel that way even in my car (well, at least in my car I probably wouldn't die. On my bike? Maybe). The visibility around the corners is terrible and people seem to drive through that garage like maniacs.
Unfortunately, I have night owl tendencies and even if I didn't, I work for a startup and often need to work late nights, so I can't just arrange my schedule to know I can walk home before it's dark.
You raise a very important issue: a community is not walkable if a person walking in public doesn't feel reasonably safe doing so.
I'm not specifically aware of gender-specific data related to walking (though now I'm going to see what's out there), but I've looked at the issue with respect to cycling and there's a strong correlation between the gender balance of cyclists in a city and the city's material commitment to being bikeable.
That sucks :( My former office (in Pioneer Square, Seattle) has a pretty large homeless & drug-dealing population, but I rarely don't feel safe. Even when I leave work at 1am on a friday night, I just dodge a few intersections that are especially bad and I get home safe. But I'm also a guy-- I know that some of my female coworkers didn't like it, to the extent that we'd sometimes walk them to the parking garage.
Well, 1 am I might still feel okay. Downtown Gainesville is full of nightclubs, and they don't close until 2 am, so there's a large number of (drunk) pedestrians milling around up until about 2:30 am.
It's 3-4am that I don't feel safe. I can't change my route, any detours I could take would only take me through even less safe areas.
I've considered mace/pepper spray but quite honestly I'd rather just avoid the possibility altogether. About a year ago there was homeless woman killed in that area.
not cheap but easily transportable indoors and out. you can store it by your desk in a bag. i see them all over dublin as it's cheaper ultimately to keep your bike by your side than lock them in a public place. and also been brought on public transport.
I started doing the same thing last year, at least when the weather is pleasant. It's an amazingly liberating experience.
It makes you look forward to spring. I live in a place that typically has bad winters, so the prospect of breaking my neck on ice is not very appealing!
There are some pretty significant risks associated with driving as well, including both the risk of injury/death in a collision and the sheer sedentary seat time.
I grew up in Alberta and fresh dry wind blown snow is hard to walk on, like dry sand. Slow going.
I now live in Vancouver and despite temperature it gets damp enough that movement without sweating is well nigh impossible. Good thing I work at a pool and don't give a damn.
since i put the studded tires on, i have not slipped once. i haven't even come close to slipping to be honest. i pretty much rie as i would on clear, dry asphalt.
While I agree that most people walking would be generally better than not, I don't quite follow your reasoning.
According to this paper [1], mean comfortable walking speed for a male in his twenties is 253.3 cm/s (~5.67 mph). Assuming you are male and in your twenties, this means it takes you ~39 mins to work each way, not including stopping at intersections, etc. Contrast this to ~15 mins each way in a car.
This means the cost/benefit would go something like this:
Walking:
(+) 78 mins/day commuting + exercise
(+) Mood heightened
(-) Lesser exercise (walking vs 1 hr at the gym where, presumably, you'd do more than walk)
Driving/Gym:
(-) 90 mins/day communting + exercise
(-) Mood not heightened
(+) Better exercise
(+) More flexibility (want to go more than a couple miles for lunch? Sorry.)
My guess is that most people choose option 2 for the flexibility alone. This allows them to do their exercise when they want to. Whether or not they will is another story.
> this means it takes you ~39 mins to work each way
I'm not sure about your speed calculations - average adult walking speed is generally understood to be around 5-6 km/h (3-3.75 mph). I'm a male in my late 30s and I generally walk at a relatively brisk 7-8 km/h (4.3-5 mph).
As it happens, my walk home is about twice as long as my walk to work, since I pick up my son from school along the way. My walk to work takes about 20 minutes and the walk home takes around 45-50 (part of it at a child's brisk pace).
> This means the cost/benefit would go something like this:
You're missing some factors from your cost/benefit analysis.
* Walking to work means we only need 1 family car. That saves $10,000 a year in direct ownership costs, not including paying for parking.
* If I drove instead of walking, I would not use the time saved for exercise at a gym (know thyself), so I would simply miss that daily exercise. But if my commute just happens to constitute daily exercise, so be it.
* There are about a dozen restaurants within a 5-10 minute walk of my office, including some of the best places in the city. (However, I'm cheap and almost always pack a lunch anyway.)
* Downtown, not having a car confers more flexibility because I don't have to figure out where to park it.
* If I do need more transportation flexibility on a given day, I can always take my bike to work that day.
>...my daily commute is a 6 km (3.7 mile) round trip by foot...I'm a male in my late 30s and I generally walk at a relatively brisk 7-8 km/h (4.3-5 mph)...My walk to work takes about 20 minutes...
Does not compute. A trip of 3.7 miles at a speed of 5 miles per hour would take ~45 minutes. If you can actually walk your 6 km commute in 20 minutes, you should quit your job and start competing in Olympic race walking, since you are apparently outpacing the reigning world champion [1].
He said roundtrip, so his 20 minute figure is for 3km, not 6. Still fast but not impossible. He might also be mentally rounding up the distance a little and down the minutes a little.
For comfy gaits, the study reported 127.2 cm/s for women (2.8 mph) and 146.2 cm/s for men (3.2 mph). That matches my own experience walking and hiking.
Looking at figure 1, page 17, that 2.5 m/s is mean maximum speed, not comfortable speed. That's about 1.5 m/s. I think 2.5 m/s is high, even for mean top speed.
I can think of quite a few... San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, New York, Boston, Dallas, Austin, Houston. Even Los Angeles and Atlanta have nice "new downtown" areas, though the traditional downtowns are sketchy (Wilshire and Midtown, respectively).
Lots of cities have nice areas around downtown, but few have nice areas around downtown where you can do everything you need (walk to work, walk to the grocery, etc). They do exist, obviously, and some people are more tolerant about walking through a few bad blocks on the way to work than others, but it is my observation that most U.S. cities don't do a good job of making downtown a desirable place to live. Many U.S. downtowns essentially shutdown after 5pm as all of the restaurants close for the day and everyone commutes back to the 'burbs.
That's the traditional "business district" style downtown, yeah, but afaict there's been a shift away from that in the past 15-20 years, and now many people commute to downtown in the evenings, because that's where all the restaurants/bars/clubs/theaters are. That's definitely the case in the Bay Area, where SF is much more lively after 5pm than most of the Valley is (Santa Clara is basically dead once office workers go home). Was also the case in Midtown Atlanta when I lived there a few years ago; big influx from the suburbs in the evenings, esp on weekends.
SOMA too for the most part. Sadly the walk between workable parts (SOMA/FiDi) and livable parts has goes through areas that are less than ideal for walking (in terms of feeling safe).
Salt Lake City's downtown and everything north, east, and south isn't sketchy at all. If you start going west, it's a little different story but compared to most anywhere in SF it's super tame.
SLC blocks are huge, though, and (with exception of a thin strip along Main St), it was clearly not designed with walking in mind. Yes, there are sidewalks, but there's very little street furniture, retail is set far back and not at sidewalk level, and lights don't open for pedestrians unless you specifically press the button.
It's better than most, I agree, but still a far cry from NYC, Boston, or SF.
I got pulled over by the police for walking in Houston
Running alongside the freeway is an access road where all the on-off ramps feed. It has a wide sidewalk along the side and it was only a couple of junctions between the hotel and the site I was visiting so I walked.
A police car immediately pulled up to ask where I was going and why? Fortunately the English accent convinced them I was obviously merely some pinko-commie weirdo and not a threat to Houston society.
I could see that in the suburbs, but people commonly walk downtown, in the museum district, and the Rice area. Lots of new condo towers going up in the past few years, and the light rail connects those areas.
Within one block of my house is a park, a subway stop, a mid sized mall, a variety of restaurants etc. I find it's easier to walk to most places in the area than get in my car and then look for parking. Honestly, most of the high density parts of Arlington Virginia are vary walkable because it's both high density and mixed use.
Note that I'm not in particularly good shape and a walk of this magnitude is not at all difficult. I arrive at work every day refreshed, alert and in a good mood, and I arrive home after work feeling the same way.
You couldn't pay me enough to take a job at which I was forced to drive, though I wouldn't mind cycling to work if the distance was too long to walk in a reasonable time.