What's in your 20 minute radius?

When I lived in Arlington, MA, I would commute via Red Line to the end of the line at Alewife. Alewife had terrible imageability and signage, and visitors constantly got confused as to which exits to take from the platform and the station. In four years of commuting I think I recall three complete signage overhauls. One included a handy map of the area with concentric circles estimating how far you could get in a 10 or 15 or 20 minute walk from the station. The shopping center was within the 10 minute radius. Our house was on the edge of the 15 minute circle.

What's in your personal 20 minute radius? If you stepped out of your front door, how many people could you get to in 20 minutes of walking, biking, or driving? How many businesses? Is there a library in your circle? A supermarket? A farmers market? A museum? Parks? Do your friends live in your 20 minute radius? Your closest friends? People you could drop the baby off with in an emergency?

20 minutes is about as long as I feel I can be in transit and still feel like my destination is "close by". In my current city locale, that means about 10 blocks by foot, 20 by bike, and anywhere from a two to five miles by car depending on traffic, time of day, the direction I'm going, the availability of parking. Transit time isn't just what Google Maps says it will take to get to my destination. Add a minute to get into the car and pull out of the driveway (a minute not needed if just walking away). Add a minute or two to find parking, or, sometimes, five or ten minutes if there's no street parking and downtown is locked up and you need to wander up to the very top of the municipal garage to find a spot, then walk back down the five flights and back a block to get to your destination. At moments like that, my 20 minute zone has a big hole in it covering downtown Santa Monica that just happens to include a whole lot of destinations I'd like to go to.

I think there are 1-200,000 people living in my 20 minute radius, but only four donut shops and one ice cream place I'm interested in going to. I live in a dense part of a big big city and even without getting on the highway (which since it takes 15 minutes from front door to on ramp isn't too helpful in expanding my 20 minute radius) there is a lot of life around me.

My 20 minute radius shrinks a little when I have the baby with me, just for the added time of prepping a stroller or getting her in and out of the car. Generously that takes up two minutes, leaving 18 for actually getting anywhere. My radius shrinks during rush hour and grows on Sundays when roads are clear and parking abundant. Any car trip adds a few minutes of adjusting and parking, leaving at most 15 minutes of driving, instead of 18 minutes of walking. If I biked more, I would be faster at getting my bike out of the shed and wouldn't need to hunt down the key to my bike lock, and my biking radius would grow a little bit.

Walkscore.com will grade your home and neighborhood for walkability, measuring how many cultural and commercial resources are available to a pedestrian. Which is great, when I'm a pedestrian, but doesn't account for the resources I can access by car in the same amount of time. For the sum total of my 20 minute radius, the best I can do is estimate, live here, track how long it gets to the places I want to go.

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: cereal
lunch: lentil soup
dinner: Eli Breakfast Sandwiches and lentils on noodles