Because time is the only really meaningful metric. That’s why they invented the light-year as a unit of distance.
ETA: as a further example, how do you quantify distance when you’re flying by air? Who on Earth says, “it’s a 1400-mile flight”? That’s rubbish. They’ll say how long the flight takes, because that’s what people want to know.
People’s answers might also be tempered by their own knowledge and experience.
For example, I have no idea of the distance to my doctor’s office, but I know it’s a 15 minute walk or a five minute drive so that’s how I’d answer. I used to have a second home in the country. I knew that was almost exactly 100 miles away, but the drive through London other typical traffic delays could mean it took anything from 2.5 to 4.5 hours, so when asked I’d say it was 100 miles away.
When I was growing up in Salt Lake City, distances were really easy to calculate since everything is on a numbered grid system with seven blocks to the mile.
However, now as a driver in a country without consistent numbering, I notice the time much, much more than the distance.
When I lived in Tokyo and took public transportation I had no idea how far things were. All I could do was tell you the time. People from the States would ask me how far it was from the airport to the hotel. No one really cared the distance, they want to know how long it was going to take. It’s simply shorthand for most people to ask the distance when they really need to know the time.
This really isn’t a bad thing. We do it a lot, such as calling someone’s house and asking if the person is there. (I wonder how long it will be before us oldsters have to explain to the kids that there used to be phones in homes and not everyone had a cell.) Little children will provide the literal answer, “Yes, Mommy is here.” and will stay on the line waiting for their prize.
Bolding mine.
In L.A. back when I spent some time there, driving a car was almost the only means of travel. Greyhound did come through, but they were unreliable as to sticking to a schedule. Almost no one biked anywhere, & L.A. is to spread out to walk anywhere. I think that this is still the case for the most part today.
As far as whether most folks drove or flew to Vegas, again very few affluent folks flew. Those that flew rarely conversed with us common folks. When they did talk to the lower crust, they assumed, (correctly), that we would be driving. I think that this has changed drastically, more folks fly, & there is less class distinction these days.
Since I spend a fair amount of time at an airport, I do meet more tourists from overseas these days. Most of them have little concept of how far a mile is. I have little concept of how far a kilometer is, (about 5/8ths of a mile). I give distances in hours since an hour is the same world wide. This way, I give them useful information.
A couple from Spain has no idea as to how far 245 miles is. If I tell them that the distance from Grand Junction to Denver is 245 miles, it means little to them. If I say from Grand Junction to Denver is an hour by plane, four hours by car, at least 8 hours by Greyhound bus, & 9 hours, minimum, by train. They have received useful information from me.
If anyone wants mileage to a destination from me, I will happily give it to them, but my default is to give them the time. It is usually more helpful.
No, of course not. OTOH, I also wouldn’t ask my distance question using terms suggesting that I suspect it changes depending on the time of day.
I sometimes ask how far a place is without having the slightest intention of going there, and greographical information is precisely what I’m interested in.
That reminds me: next time I get sent to OKC for training, I need to check and see if I have enough frequent flier hours to upgrade to first class for the SNA to DAL leg.
This opening line from a novel comes to mind:
“I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles.”
Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Asking “how far” is inferred as “something is not here; it is at a distance; what is the magnitude of that farness,” and time is a perfectly acceptable unit of farness in most of the examples previously given. Especially with the use of the word “how” which is explicitly used to solicit the quality of something.
“What is the distance” would result in my answering any such query with my rough estimation in appropriate units of linear measurement instead of time, and I assume others would infer the same distinction when asked such instead of “how far.”
Knowing that people are prone to answer in units of time, if you require a measure of distance, is it so hard to ask “How many miles is it from here to Eternity” rather than waiting for them to answer and then getting upset?
And even then, you can’t be certain of what information the answerer has given you: Has he given you the distance as the crow flies? Or the distance as the crow drives? Or perhaps the distance by train, which requires taking a train downtown first and then transferring to another train going a different direction?
The differences can be substantial, especially over short distances. The straight-line distance between two towns might be 20 miles, but given how highways are laid out, it could easily be a 40 mile driving distance.
Flying time can also remind you of the curvature of the earth that you don’t typically see on a map, which can result in some potentially surprising facts. For example, a flight from Puerto Rico to virtually anywhere on the US east coast is about 3-4 hours. San Juan to Orlando is only slightly shorter than San Juan to Philadelphia.
Exactly. You are answering the question they should have asked to start with.
Why?
People don’t have a distance limit; they have a time limit. 24 hours in a day, finite number of days in a life.
It’s not like a human being has an odometer and a distance-limited lease. If I can get to Alpha Centauri in one hour, the 4.3 light-years is irrelevant.
In the vast majority of cases where someone is wondering about “how far is it to X”, the question they are really asking is “how long will it take me to get to X”, which is often only tangentially related to the distance.
Mostly people ask this question if they’re trying to determine, for example, what time they should leave their house in order to make it to an appointment or trying to decide how big a pain in the ass it’s going to be to attend a social gathering.
For example, I don’t actually know the physical distance from my home to my office. I do, however, know that it will take me between 35 and 45 minutes to cover the distance in a car going by the most reasonable route. Therefore I know I need to be in the car no later than 7:15 to make it by 8:00. I could Google up the actual distance, but it’s largely irrelevant other than as a point of trivial information.
That’s really it, and as a bonus, using time encompasses differences in speed limits, urbanization, etc… in a way that simple distance does not.
For example, Houston to Dallas is about 275 miles which at the posted 75 mph speed limit for most of the trip, is something like 3.7 hours. But in practice, that trip takes at least 4 hours if you drive like mad, and usually more like 4.5-5 hours.
Similarly, Austin to Dallas is only about 205 miles, which theoretically should be under 3 hours. In practice, it’s not a whole lot less than the Houston trip, because in general, you’re not going the posted speed limit often due to heavy traffic, and there are numerous slow-downs and construction zones which slow you down further.
So saying that going to Dallas from Houston is a 4.5 hour trip, and that going to Dallas from Austin is a 4 hour trip is more informative than saying they’re 275 vs. 205
The Inverted World. 
Excellent book.
In any case, there’s nothing wrong with the construction. Time is a dimension, so it’s perfectly legitimate to measure distance using it.
If someone meant flight time they would specify. On the West Coast, distances can be great. And we drive everywhere. Unless you live in a larger city, there really isn’t public transportation. Buses, trains, even taxis are few and far between. Driving time, unless we specify differently, is what we mean.
I can’t imagine that there’s anywhere in the US where the time given to a person doesn’t mean driving time unless otherwise specified. Sure, people do take trains and planes and subways, but the majority of people outside small urban areas are going to spend a hell of a lot more time in a car than any other form of transportation.
I understand why people do it. But it’s not only because of transportation habits–a lot of it is just simple geographic ignorance. Many of those who do specify, when further questioned, still won’t be able to say how far a given 15-minute drive is, because, as pointed out above, usually they don’t care. But a lot of us do live in L.A. proper–where buses, trains, and taxis abound, and “we” don’t always drive everywhere. That awareness–knowing how far something actually is–can matter, for example, if I might miss the last train, and I want to weigh walking the distance against paying for a taxi or Uber. (Also, I once drove a taxi here, which changed my perspective.)
One of my favorites. I recently had a question for the author and he sent me the response in an E-mail. Of course, I printed that sucker!
In the novel, the conversion of “miles time” to customary time units is one mile equals ten days. that puts the speaker quoted as having reached the age of 17 years and about 295 days (not worrying about Leap Days).
Time is a much more relevant measure than distance for most cases. The subway station is a ten minute walk, or the cabin is a three hour drive from here is a much more meaningful answer than distance as the crow flies.