It also depends on the walking conditions. Downtown has nice side walks, shade, lots of crosswalks and a speed limit of around 35. I’ll happily walk many many blocks. By my house? Few if any sidewalks, crosswalks are rare, and cars go absurd speeds even though the speed limit is 40. I won’t walk more than maybe three blocks. It just seems unsafe and frustrating.
Yep. The library is only a couple of miles from my house, and when I first moved here, I thought it’d make for a nice walk considering at the time I was walking 10-20 miles a week with friends on campus at school in addition to the normal walks back and forth to classes. Then, within days I realized that a. there are no sidewalks, b. the speed limit is between 40-45 the whole two miles and c. no one actually drives as slow as the speed limit and that while driving up the crest of a big hill, a person on the side of the road would be hard to see. The idea of walking two miles each way on the sandy shoulder of the road suddenly seemed a lot less fun, and I’ve never tried it 
I’d say about 2 miles on average for an able-bodied person. More in good weather, less in bad weather or when carrying heavy things. 2 miles really isn’t far at all.
That’s partly because of the other variable - traffic. Even a pedestrian is going to be delayed a lot by the traffic, due to having to stop at a road crossing every few metres. Also, many of the pavements will be packed. It’d take a lot longer than 3 miles in a quiet suburb.
For a daily commute, two miles or so on the flat. For going to the shops, it depends upon how much I expect to buy. I’m not struggling two miles with a shedload of shopping bags. But I might well struggle half a mile.
It depends on how hot it is, how I’m dressed, how much I’m carrying etc. But generally around 3-4km.
I don’t have a car, so I suspect I do a lot more walking than the average person.
Nah, it should be easy enough. The Embarcadero is easy to walk on. It’s also flat, which makes it super easy in comparison to most walks in San Francisco. It can be very foggy and chilly in the summer, though.
GoogleMaps shows it as 7.3 miles and a 2 hour, 39-minute walk.
I voted ‘over 1.5 miles’, but that’s definitely dependent on reasonable weather, being relatively unburdened, and not being pressed for time.
Between seven to eight miles is my personal definition. Yes, it takes a long time and I have to travel light, but if you tell me you live 3.5 to 4 miles from me and I can use sidewalks all the way there, chances are I’ll be walking to you and then walking home. I walk 7 miles every day, so it’s no biggie for me.
When other people ask me if a place is within walking distance, I’ll say no if it’s longer than two miles.
I think we talk ourselves out of walking distance pretty easily so I try to go for longer rather than shorter when I think of it. Walking is easy incidental exercise that doesnt involve trips to the gym or the like so I try to make time for it given I save time elsewhere by doing it.
So mine is 5k total, ie 2.5k there, 2.5 back if a round trip is needed in short order, or 5k one way if a break is involved - Ill do more than that but worry about time pressures more with longer. But it also obviously depends on how many trips you need to do a week.
Otara
I regularly walk golf courses. That’s about five miles after you’ve added the walk from each green to the next tee (and a few trips into the woods to track down errant shots). Over about four hours, of course, so it’s not one long steady walk.
I’ll also walk the two miles from the nearby “Tires Plus” store after I drop the car off to be serviced.
On the other hand, I drive the one mile trip and the one mile back when I go to the gym each day…
I’m 62.
Closer to 3 miles, depending on where you start from. But pedestrians can walk unmolested all the way on the bay side of the Embarcadero (you must be looking at a very old map, there is no Embarcadero Freeway any more), and so it only depends on the weather as to whether it would be pleasant or not.
Nitpicking again, it’s more like 7 as the crow flies. And if you’re encountering any hills, that makes it quite a trek.
Amen to that. My first trip to Manhattan last year, beautiful weather, we must have walked 10 miles a day (not all at once, mind you). I loved walking in Manhattan, it’s so nice and flat compared to San Francisco (as someone has already said).
I took the OP to mean the farthest I would go if I had to choose between walking and not going at all. I hiked up the Grand Canyon this year, I forget how many miles (Bright Angel Trail) but it was pretty much the only way to go (allergic to mules).
Roddy
That’s Candlestick Park, where the Giants haven’t played for ten or eleven years.
Apparently.
I’m having a hard time reconciling the results of this poll with those of the fat poll.
Depends on how badly the plantar fasciitis is kicking up, but a mile or two round trip is no big deal.
Yeah, that part of your post completely threw me. The Embarcadero freeway shook down in the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 and was fully demolished. Now there’s a broad boulevard with a median and parks running alongside, and trolley service, all the way down.
I was looking at “The Embarcadero” on Google maps, and thinking that was the same thing. Just read my earlier post without the word “freeway” in it.
20-30 minutes would be walking distance for me - at 8km an hour that would be somewhere between 1.5-2 miles.
I take the bus a lot, and my house is about a half a mile to a mile away from the stops nearest to us. So my definition of “walking distance” has to be fairly flexible. I once walked about five miles back from a bus stop after I’d gotten on the wrong bus. That was definitely too long a walk in an urban, non-pedestrian-friendly environment, though if I were hiking at a state park somewhere it’d probably be different.
I got one of these carts just for that. I walk to Safeway or the Superstore about two times a week now, and trundle my groceries home with me. I still take the car every once in a while to stock up on heavy, bulky stuff, but the majority of my trips are on foot with my little cart. My stores are about a half hour there and a half hour back; I think they’re both about a mile away (but it’s uphill home from both of them).
We’ll walk a lot on vacations or sightseeing; four or five hours of walking at the zoo is fairly normal. One of my favourite ways to exercise is shopping in the mall; shopping for hours gets you a lot of burnt calories. 