Image transcript:

The “what if you wanted to go to heaven, but god said ____” meme template, but here it says, “What if you wanted to walk to get groceries, but city planners said DRIVE”. The last panel is an image of a massive freeway full of cars.

  • thrawn@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Hello, interested in life without cars but not knowledgeable. How do you transport groceries? I buy in bulk and sometimes have boxes of things, not sure how I’d get that stuff home without a moving trunk

    • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      A few ideas, which may or may not work out for any given situation:

      • Bike with panniers/baskets/trailer or a fully fledged cargo bike - these can pack a surprising amount of stuff
      • Order your groceries delivered
      • Skip buying in bulk - it’s not necessary in a context where the nearest grocery store is within walking distance.

      For reference, I live in a country with decently well designed urban environments, and my nearest grocery store is less than 200m away by foot. I could just do all of my shopping there, but it’s a bit more expensive, so I bike to a cheaper store that is 3.5km away, taking me less than 10 minutes. There I fill up a basket and maybe a pannier, which gets us enough groceries to last for a week or so.

      If I need to transport anything larger, I primarily look to have it delivered, or as a last resort, I rent a car. Renting a car is almost never necessary, though.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Public transport, cargo bike, walk/public transit to go & taxi to come back, buy smaller quantities more often…

    • Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.worldOPM
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      1 year ago

      It really depends on where you live, the infrastructure and transit available to you, and any other circumstantial factors.

      First off, a big part of what !fuckcars@lemmy.world wants to fix is the problem that many communities are simply designed with the assumption that everyone will drive everywhere, which often means most people aren’t within walking distance of shops (because it’s literally illegal to build grocery stores in many residential areas). It also often means very shoddy pedestrian infrastructure, sketchy (if even existing at all) bike infrastructure, and little to no public transit.

      If you live within walking distance of a grocery store, you’re in luck! Something like a granny cart (pictured below) can allow you take pretty heavy loads of groceries on foot.

      If it’s too far to walk but you have decent bike lanes or paths that you feel comfortable riding on, you can attach pannier bags and/or crates to a bike (an e-bike makes it even easier) to carry pretty big grocery hauls home.

      If neither walking nor biking are options but public transit is, you can take a granny cart on the bus or train easily as well. Of course, a limitation is none of these three options can take nearly as big a haul in one trip as a car can, but the idea is you can make smaller, more frequent trips. For example, I live a 5-minute walk from the nearest grocery store, so I can pop on over a couple times a week to get a few items, which is light enough to carry. Of course, if you need to feed multiple people and it’s a kind of long, onerous journey to get groceries by foot/bike/transit, this might no longer be feasible, unfortunately.

      If none of those are feasible, there’s no shame in having to use a car. The villain here is the system that forces people to drive even if they’d prefer not to, not the people being force by circumstance to drive.

    • Boxtifer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      When the store is walkable, your bulk buying turns into one bulk item that you walk to and get.

      Basically its the same way you get something bulk from your trunk into your house. Which is probably your hands and arms.

    • BattleBeetle@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The thing with walkable urbanized area is that you don’t have to buy in bulk for groceries, because a grocery stores are just minutes away from home. I myself shop in a traditional market which is only 5 minutes bicycle ride away from home. Plus there are many convenience stores within 1km radius.

    • Pipoca@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I used to take the subway to work, and usually walked past a grocery store or two - one downtown, and one a block from my apartment.

      Because the overhead of shopping was lower (it was at most thirty seconds out of the way, on foot), I’d stop in a couple times a week, and picked up a bag or two of groceries that I’d just carry home by hand. It made it easier to be spontaneous.

      For bigger trips, you could use a cargo bike or panniers. But I rarely felt the need. Buying in bulk was much less convenient than just buying an amount I could carry by hand, because it requires a special, deliberate trip.

    • harmsy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      For trips like that, I have a fold up cart and a strap backpack thing that lets me carry the folded up cart on my back. The second part is optional. You could just pull the cart both ways.

    • CsikosPite@lemmings.world
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      1 year ago

      If i want to buy something. The closest shop is around 10 minute from my house. If I buy in bulk put everithing into my bicicle and walk home. Its just me not everyone want this I understand, but if we didnt have cars we just solve it in other ways

    • vldnl@feddit.dk
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      1 year ago

      I haven’t seen this option mentioned yet but you can also order your groceries online, and have them delivered. That’s what I do at the moment, because I live outside the city and my nearest grocery store is 2 km away. I could bike or hop on a bus, and I do sometimes, but ordering online is just really convenient.

      • pirat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I like the convenience too. It’s almost “back to the roots” to the times when your local grocer/trader would deliver the goods to the local citizens, since he was the one with the car, though today this dude is replaced by a faceless webshop. And even though this option includes cars, it reduces the number on the road, since one delivery vehicle will (potentially, though not necessarily) replace one car for every household it’s delivering to. This vehicle (theoretically, at least) drives the most time/fuel-efficient route, instead of every household driving to the store(s) and back again. Funny how this is moving traffic of the roads and turning it into digital internet traffic!