People do shop at supermarkets via bicycle
(See "Zoning Commission Chairman: No One Bikes to the Grocery Store" from the Washington City Paper.)
Yes, I am willing to concede that large families would find it difficult to shop this way. But that demographic isn't typical of center city households.
In fact more generally, household size is shrinking nationally, and in the city in particular. See "In USA, more choose to live alone" from USA Today.
I will say that the quality of bicycle parking at supermarkets tends to be pretty substandard overall. (More about this some other time.) This Giant is a bit better than most.
Labels: car culture and automobility, food-agriculture-markets, zoning
posted by Richard Layman @ 12:06 PM&Permanent Link
10 Comments:
Agreed, although arguably walking to the grocery is even more prevalent (and makes a ton of sense).
Even when I had a car I would often walk to the grocery. It's often more pleasant than driving a car through narrow streets, finding scarce parking in the garage or on the street, then loading the groceries in the car, driving back, having to find a parking spot near the house/apt, and then lugging everything back in. Just felt inefficient and un-fun.
Of course we predominately use Peapod here. It doesn't even cost more (often discounts on delivery, easier to comparison shop,etc and max delivery cost is 8.95- much better for delivery of sodas/water). I think I would use Peapod even if I still had a car. Its a lifesaver with a child... I just wish a more upscale grocer ala WF had a delivery service. Then I would be in heaven...
We're a family of five and I bike to the grocery store all of the time. We have one a few blocks from home and I can carry more stuff via bike compared to walking. I also often stop at a grocery store 7 miles away on my way home from work - by bike. When you have a grocery store close by you find yourself walking/biking there 3 days a week instead of hauling home a trunkful of groceries every 7 days.
H St. LL -- I sure think about when I first moved to DC and lived on the 800 block of 4th St. NE. Never would I have expected to be able to walk to a supermarket on the same block! Similarly, people in the 5th and L NW area or in walking distance to the Harris-Teeter at 1st and M NE. How great would it be to "all of a sudden" have that access?
2. Similarly, think about the rebuilding of the Safeway one block from Petworth Metro. Not only will it be walkable for so many people, but it is very much Metro-accessible (not unlike the Giant at Columbia Heights).
Tom -- we don't have kids, but I shop at all kinds of grocery stores facilitated by biking, from the Aldi (about 6 miles from my house, maybe a bit more) to all sorts of other supermarkets, large and small, as I go about my business.
I do think it ends up being a different way to shop, and yes, you buy less each transaction but just the same amount overall, whereas others are more focused on that one big buying trip that they make each week.
I rented a car this past weekend -- I had to drive to my parents' house to help my father with a home improvement project on Saturday. I still had the car on Sunday, but the wife and I walked to Frager's and the grocery store. We are so used to doing everything by foot and bike, using the car for a couple of simple and nearby errands seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Sure, we would use a car if we were buying mulch or a 50 pound bag of gravel. But otherwise, we manage perfectly well doing our regular shopping without a car.
50 lb of gravel is easy on a sit up style bicycle with ample cargo capacity- why is it that people think they "need" a car in a city like DC? I believe that it is lack of imagination and the will to try anything non conformist or different from the sprawl lifestyle.
People lived for most of human history w/o cars. Why should they so suddenly become a "necessity"? It is all artifical conditioning and brain washing.
http://inhabitat.com/ikea-debuts-bike-trailers-in-denmark/
I'm trying to do a pilot for this in DC somewhere...
Anonymous:
Did you read my comment? I was making a case for running errands and generally living without a car!! I never said anyone needs a car in DC. We don't own a car and rarely use one. I did need one to visit my parents last weekend. There is no other way to get there. (Let me guess: you are so pure, imaginative and unbrainwashed that you would have spent five days walking each way.) You might be the kind of person who prefers to stay on his high horse and not rent a car to help his elderly parents out with a project. I sucked it up, rented a car and went and helped them. I'm unimaginative that way. You are welcome to have a discussion with them regarding their choice of where to live. Given your charm and obvious powers of persuasion, perhaps you could convince then to reconsider living in a car-dependent location. I am apparently a feeble minded simpleton to open to brainwashing to convince them. Oh, by the way, I own a cargo trailer for my bike and have used exactly for that purpose -- hauling a few bags of gravel from Frager's to my house. But yes, I have at times used a car for similar errands. Somebody brainwashed me into doing it! Given the problem of car dependence in our country, I think targeting me as unimaginative and brainwashed for my use of a car a handful of times a year is way off target. I live 99 percent of my life car-free and own and regularly use bike cargo trailer. But, I somehow fail to live up to your purity test. I will keep trying harder and maybe one day I will be as unbrainwashed and imaginative as you are.
What a jerk...
RG
take a deep breath- no one is trying to critique your lifestyle at all- actually you are one of the FEW who get it around here and I always have looked to your comments as very good and refreshing - I too had elderly parents- they both lived here in DC- but there is no escaping needing a car to get people out to some places as we have made it all but impossible to do otherwise. No one is attacking you- quite the opposite- if only you would comment on other blogs where the REAL idiots run the show- like GGW and some of the vehicular cycling style blogs .If only more people on Capitol Hill were like us there would be better things going on but everyone who lives where we do drives and insists on it even when they do not need to.
RG
you are also one of the few that realizes the folly and criminality of buffoons like those who run and operate the CHRS- if only more would see them for who and what they really are- against urban living and pro car centric , anti- density, anti- transit, anti- everything SMART
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