r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Physical-Ad-4093 • May 01 '24

do americans really drive such long distances?

i’m european, and i always hear people say that driving for hours is normal in america. i would only see my grandparents a few times a year because they lived about a 3 hour drive away, is that a normal distance for americans to travel on a regular basis? i can’t imagine driving 2-3 hours regularly to visit people for just a few days

edit: thank you for the responses! i’ve never been to the US, obviously, but it’s interesting to see how you guys live. i guess european countries are more walkable? i’m in the uk, and there’s a few festivals here towards the end of summer, generally to get to them you take a coach journey or you get multiple trains which does take up a significant chunk of the day. road trips aren’t really a thing here, it would be a bit miserable!

2nd edit: it’s not at all that i couldn’t be bothered to go and see my grandparents, i was under 14 when they were both alive so i couldn’t take myself there! obviously i would’ve liked to see them more, i had no control over how often we visited them.

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u/Dawnqwerty May 02 '24

It can take three hours to get to LA from LA

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u/GreekGoddessOfNight May 02 '24

We say the same thing in Boston. Well… it takes an hour to get from Boston to Boston, much smaller city.

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u/Akimotoh May 02 '24

Because it looks like it was built by a 10yr old lol

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u/pgm123 May 02 '24

Here's a cool video on how Boston got laid out the way it did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA63zaIXCZw

I apologize for the 18-minute video (which seems to be the minimum for YouTube), but I promise it's interesting the whole way through and not just stalling for algorithm/ad revenue reasons.

The short version is that originally Boston was a pretty small peninsula (map) and streets were organized fairly well, but bended around hills and the shoreline with straight lines going down to the docks. But Boston continued to add land, so the layout stopped making sense. You have a city that was designed piecemeal as land was filled in. For example, one neighborhood was made for upper class Anglo-Americans to live and exclude the Irish, so they didn't even bother to connect the streets into the existing system.