I walk. It’s almost exactly a mile, so not terribly far.
I wear a cheap pair of walking shoes to the office and keep my nice work shoes there. I’ve considered going in to the office in sweats or something and changing in my slacks and dress shirts there, but it’s not that far and an umbrella keep me from getting wet most of the time.
My wife acts like having to walk that mile must be a major inconvenience, but I don’t see well enough to drive anyway and it’s a way to get exercise that I need to get anyway. When the weather is really bad, I sometimes get a ride either from my wife or my employee.
For 26 years, I walked the four miles to my office 4 days a week except in the worst weather (below -25C, above 30C or snowing heavily or ice underfoot) and took a commuter train home. It took about an hour and a half and sometimes I would arrive with icicles coming down my beard. Then I retired and even so walk to my office once a week on Tuesdays (seminar days), most recently three days ago. In my previous position, I lived about a mile and a half from my office, never had a parking sticker and there was no public transit worth talking about, so I walked both ways, although there was a large gym I could duck into about hafway and did in the worst weather.
It takes me about 40 minutes to walk to work. That’s too long for my patience and tendency to run late. I’ll sometimes walk home, and even more often walk at least part way for 15 minutes or so. Then I grab a bus or the train the rest of the way.
I bought a house near the school where I was going to teach.
So I walked to work for 25 years.
Especially useful for popping home in the lunch-hour or working late…
When I lived in NYC, I walked to work many times … depending on where my apartment was, and where I was working. When I lived in Brooklyn Hts. for a while, I used to walk to work across the Brooklyn Bridge. For a few years I walked home from work in the middle of the night, and never got mugged.
I liked to be able to walk to work, but it wasn’t easy to make it happen. I managed it twice: the last couple of years before I left Portland, I lived across the road from the Memorial Coliseum and walked across the bridge and down to 1320 SW Broadway (the Oregonian building). The last 4 years before I met my husband I lived in San Francisco just above Broadway on Telegraph Hill, and walked to 5th and Mission (the Chronicle building). I was bicycling this one for a while but I got tired of having my bikes get stolen so I went to walking.
I don’t know how far either one of these was, I guess a couple of miles or so one way. Now that I’m retired, I walk to my chair, or walk out to the back yard to do some gardening, but everything else I have to drive to.
At least several at any given point in my life. And if you include walking to public transportation and from the nearest stop to work, you can raise that to dozens at any given moment. For quite a number of years I walked to work almost all the time even when I had a motorcycle available; it was only a couple miles and parking sucked. It was common enough around me that it really wasn’t until I was well out of college that I became aware that “most people” drove to work on a daily basis.
My parents do- well, one of them would drive, beause they needed to have the car at work, as they were the owners and that was the only vehicle insured for business use, but they had this low key sneaky squabble about who got to walk, with both of them trying to leave before the other one.
When I worked for them it worked out better, as, though it was a nice walk down country lanes, I am not a mornings person, and the extra 15 minutes to caffeinate and get up was definitely my presence. I’d walk home fairly often though.
I used to walk when I worked at a grocery store 15 minutes walk from my old house. Sometimes I’d get the bus if it was too wet, but not often. Half the other staff were horrified that I walked, as it was through what is known as one of the dodgy areas, but in a year, the closest I got to trouble was a guy nearly hitting me on a bike, then stopping and apologising, and a slightly crazy lady who used to scream Bible verses at the traffic yelling “Jesus loves you!” and hugging me. Frankly the bus stop was way dodgier, being right next to a ‘massage parlour’, and walking was preferable to watching a drunk guy who’d been chucked out of there try and take his trousers off while slurring something thankfully incomprehensible in my general direction.
Not to work, but my wife and I have made a point of walking our kids to school and back for the last 5 years. (since they were 5-ish) That’s about 1.5 miles each way.
It is a lovely walk past the cricket pitch with ponds and willow trees, lots of wildlife to see. It’s a conscious decision as it gives us time to talk, it is good exercise and it calibrates the kids body into what an acceptable walk is.
In very inclement weather we’ll take the car but even though this is rainy England of legend there are very few occasions when hats, gloves or a brolly aren’t enough.
Whenever possible, yes. Even while living in the US: in Miami, the three years I was in grad school I lived close enough to the university to walk there (the final year no way, I got a car), and in Philly I was able to find an apartment just 6 blocks away from the office.
If you add “walk + public transportation” then it’s probably the most common way to go to work in Spain; outside of the biggest urban areas it’s pretty normal to live in places where you can walk from one end of town to the other in 15 minutes or less. Those places won’t have public transportation but it’s not needed. People who don’t do either, it usually means that they work in an industrial area with no or very inconvenient public transportation.
I walk 1.5 miles one-way about half the time. There’s a bus that runs exactly the same route I walk. If I’m feeling lazy, or the weather is lousy, I’ll take the bus. But if I miss the bus I’ll just start walking, because I’ll usually beat the next bus to work. I’ll also walk if I need to make it in time for a meeting, since I know walking will take 25 +/- 1 minutes, as compared to the bus could be anywhere from 10 to 35 minutes.
That’s sort of my rule of thumb in general: if there’s a small chance I can beat the bus on foot, I’ll walk. And given that I have some errands that require once-an-hour buses, I’ll walk those even if it’s 2-3 miles each leg.
When I lived in Boston, I walked my Mission Hill - Charlestown commute a few times just for the hell of it. First gorgeous day of spring? No way I’m spending it underground on the T! Snow storm has shut down the city? When else can I have the entire street to myself, covered in clean fresh snow? Besides, snow in Boston is only pretty for the few hours before plows and traffic turns everything into filthy ice barricades.
I walked to work at a plant that had an enterance about 3 blocks from my apartment. There were a half a dozen or so people who lived nearby who would walk to work most of the time. There were a couple of guys with driver’s license issues that walked to work always. One of those guys had an apartment across the street from the plant enterance.
Walking the entire way to work is just a little farther than I want to do regularly (it’s about 5 miles). Never mind that the couple of times I’ve set out to do so, coworkers have stopped to pick me up because they couldn’t conceive of wanting to walk it.
That said, I fairly regularly (4-5 days a week in the fall, winter and spring, much less in the summer when it’s gross in Atlanta) walk to the train and go from there. It’s right at a mile for me to get to the train, so an easy walk.
Lived in New Hope, PA for a while and had jobs on the main drag, which was about 4 blocks long. Walked everywhere. Having always lived in cities, it was very strange to see the same people every day and constantly run into acquaintances on the way to and from work.
For a time I lived on the Delaware River about half a mile directly upstream from my job - had vague fantasies of rafting to work, but the logistics wouldve been difficult. (Not least: getting the raft back upstream.)
I didn’t but for some years the obstacle to a pure walk was a river, the Hudson. I’d walk to the boat terminal on NJ side, take the boat, walk from 12th Ave and 39th St in Manhattan to the East Side and up some blocks. It’s around 2.5 miles each way of walking, beside the boat, wouldn’t do it in bad weather, running late or if really tired.