No, that’s way too far just for the library. I’d do that for pleasure but right now I’m time poor and can’t afford that for a general task.

What kind of path takes 75min for 3.7km? In a normal environment, this should be doable in 40 minutes.

Bus or bike distance.

But i also walk closer to 3mph so maybe it would be on the edge of the weather is nice.

I don’t do walks longer than 20 minutes unless it’s for pleasure, thankfully the bus can get me most places I want to go beyond that. The terrain also makes a difference, I’d be less inclined to do 20 minutes uphill or across multiple freeways or something.

i try to walk 4 miles a day and often i burn those miles going to the library

I’d bike it. 2.3 miles should only be a 45 minute walk for a normal person unless there’s bad stop lights (assume ~20 minute miles). On a bike it’s less than 15

I am from Denmark where the biking infrastructure is also pretty good, so I will almost always take the bike if I’m going somewhere that is further than 1 km away (~.6 miles).

But that is just if I’m going somewhere – taking a 4 km walk just for the sake of the walk and getting some fresh air (especially when the weather is nice) is quite normal here.

No, and my closest library is closer to 15 minutes away.

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It has been observed through history humans have been willing to spend up to half an hour each way on their daily commute. It doesn’t matter if they are walking, biking, driving, flying, or something else, half an hour is the typical budget. Some people do go much longer (transit often allows for little longer if it is otherwise good enough that you can do something else while riding) , but that half an hour rule tends to stand across all cultures. Anyone who has farther to go will move.

That is daily commutes though. People often lived in a village near their field, but every few weeks would make the much longer trip to the town (city?) where there is a bigger market day. You don’t do this every day, but for a once or twice a a month trip it can be worth it.

So back to your question is this a regular daily trip to the library - half an hour is the most you get, so you need to have multiple locations in all but the smallest towns. If this is however the big central library with a special collection of some sort people will make a 2 hour walk every few weeks if there is something special you cannot do at the local library.

Realistically I’d aim for a small library within 15 minutes for everyone because shorter distances makes it more likely people will go. You should try to have basic market places in the same location: basic groceries, a couple cafes, a few other shops, doctor and dentist offices… That is the basics everyone wants close to home in one “central location” so it becomes habit to walk there a few times a week after work. People might go elsewhere to “costco” for their main shopping, but when you just need a cup of sugar this is close enough to send a kid alone while you finishing supper.

I can, and have in the past, it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s not something I do regularly. Here’s the thing, 4km takes about 1h walking, 30min by bus/tram, 20min by car (then another 10min finding a place to park), or 15min by bike. This is why bikes are so ubiquitous in European cities, you can get to places usually much faster than by public transport, and sometimes even faster than cars since they have to do weird paths and skip entire neighborhoods.

I normally would take public transport for such distances, mostly because I don’t own a bike and sweat more than I’m comfortable with when I ride one, and don’t mind the extra 15min of listening to music.

I think the most I would walk is around 40-45 minutes. So no, 1h15m would be far too long to justify walking. Maybe on the weekend if the library was super nice?

Definitely would bike or bus something over 30m

I’d walk that for pleasure, but not for work. Time for you to get a bike.

Probably not. And no, I’ve done maybe an hour, but more likely 45 minutes to a library in a car centric city, and now somewhere with public transit I don’t think you’re ever more than a half hour walk from one

This is part of why I’m so vocal about increasing walkability. There’s a cascading effect with increasing walkability as more and more is easily walkable less people need cars and there’s more demand for walkability and mass transit solutions.

The fact that I’ve lived in cities (including major ones) where the public transit is a bus that comes every hour and I’ve lived where it’s faster to take the train to go to a lot of places. If transit sucks, only the poor take it. In many places the bus is treated as welfare not mass transit. It can’t improve until the area is willing to invest in distant returns. Not investing however will eventually hit growing urban areas with worse and worse conditions and traffic