3 ms·

Note OP, but I'll try. In the weekend my wife and I drove out to a rural hike, 40mins out of town. How do local tourists get to that hike? Probably buses

Note OP, but I'll try. In the weekend my wife and I drove out to a rural hike, 40mins out of town. How do local tourists get to that hike? Probably buses or trains, which in decent systems are usually competitive with vehicles. It's how I did hikes in the rural Himalayas and Latin America. What if you don't live near a pool? You build the pools where people live. They live closer together in cities designed before cars. Even rural towns used to be fairly dense and walkable. I picked a random suburb of Boston called Beverly. There are 3 public pools and a number of ponds that may or may not be swimmable. No one is more than approx 1mi from a public pool. Also, commuter cycling should not be harrowing. It becomes harrowing when planners don't properly invest in the infrastructure and mix modes in dangerous ways. Imagine if we did the same thing with planes and used local highways as runways. Narrow the streets to reasonable, 3m lanes and even a 2-lane road can fit a dedicated cycle lane. The streets in my california neighborhood use a horrifying 12m for only 2 travel lanes, yet still can't find room for a cycle path.

theamk 3y ago
I lived in a country like that. The "rural hike" was a Big Deal: you'd wake up early, pack your lunches carefully, take a bus, then train, then another train, and eventually arrive. Then hike for a nice, long time (having hike time < commute time seems such a waste), and go back home the same way. By that time, you'd be pretty exhausted, nothing else "big" would get done this day, and you'd take the next day easy too. And you probably would not want to do this too often.. maybe choose a more boring local park instead. In the dense city, one is likely only half an hour away. Compared to that, now every time I drive to a remote hike it blows my mind how much stuff gets done -- the distance is the same, but it's just a long-ish morning trip. You can hike for a bit, then get back home, get groceries on the way, have lunch, and have the whole evening free. And you are not limited to destinations next to the train line either! (One thing I miss however is the ability to enter into the forest on one train station, and exit on another one. It's pretty nice when you don't have to do a loop)

theamk 3y ago

I lived in a country like that. The "rural hike" was a Big Deal: you'd wake up early, pack your lunches carefully, take a bus, then train, then another train, and eventually arrive. Then hike for a nice, long time (having hike time < commute time seems such a waste), and go back home the same way. By that time, you'd be pretty exhausted, nothing else "big" would get done this day, and you'd take the next day easy too. And you probably would not want to do this too often.. maybe choose a more boring local park instead. In the dense city, one is likely only half an hour away. Compared to that, now every time I drive to a remote hike it blows my mind how much stuff gets done -- the distance is the same, but it's just a long-ish morning trip. You can hike for a bit, then get back home, get groceries on the way, have lunch, and have the whole evening free. And you are not limited to destinations next to the train line either! (One thing I miss however is the ability to enter into the forest on one train station, and exit on another one. It's pretty nice when you don't have to do a loop)