Commuting in the city

I live in a big city and a lot of the general conveniences are within a pretty close distance. Ok they are not within a minute walk but a lot of things can be easily accessible within a 15-30 minute walk.

In our neighbourhood there are three schools within a 20 minute walk and that 20 minute walk is for the middle and high school. Our public school for junior kindergarten to grade 5 is within a 5-10 minute walk from most of the apartment buildings.

In our neighbourhood we are also lucky to have a small mall available within a 10 minute walk with basic groceries, banking and pharmacy facilities. It is very amazing to see the number of people that will drive over to the mall instead of walking when they have to go to the bank or pick up something small. For me it is a nice break when I can simply walk over to the mall and take that necessary break that I sometimes need from work.

Now what is very interesting is the number of parents that will drive their public school children to school instead of walking with them to the school. I think in some cases it probably takes longer to walk to the car then it is to walk to the school. People are also wondering why children of today are lazy and that is an example of it. If children don’t get into the habit of walking sometimes they won’t walk when they are older.

When I was growing up it was expected that you walk to school as a family quite often only had one vehicle and that vehicle was for the parent that had to drive to get to work. When it was very cold out I would take transit to my high school as it was a longer walk but when the weather was nice I would do the walk normally home from school.

I am one of those that enjoys going for walks and gets very frustrate when I can’t get the walks in that I want. Our last winter was very hard on me because it was so cold and icy that going outside for walks was something you didn’t do very often. I know that I did walk over to the mall a couple of times just to get a bit of a walk in.

Having the ability to walk to some of the basic things is great because so often we need to commute for work. I am not one of those that has to commute 1.5 hours each way to work each day and I am very glad. Commuting in a city is something that we all do but knowing that you can walk to a few spots is nice.