This is Jack from tofluency.com and this is episode 12 of the To Fluency podcast. It is fantastic to have you here listening to this episode. Now today you're going to learn a lot of vocabulary all about getting around cities. OK, so to get around a city means to move from one place to the other. And you can do this by walking, taking a car, driving your car, getting on a bus, taking the train, walk in, I think I've said that already, going on your
bike, etcetera. So we're going to talk about this, though in a really different way, because I'm going to compare different countries because I grew up in the UKI lived in Spain for a couple of years, and then I've been in America for 10 years now. So these three countries have, well, they're very different when it comes to getting around a city. And I'm going to talk about what I dislike about the US. It's very specific. It's quite interesting as well, I think.
But yeah, today you're going to learn vocabulary related to this and just get some good listening practice because I'm going to talk about this in a more conversational and informal way. But before we go too deep into it, if you want to thank me for these free podcast episodes, the best way to do that is to leave a review. So whichever podcast app you're using right now, I'm sure there is a way to click leave a review and if you do that, I'll be very grateful.
And also feel free to send these episodes to friends or anyone that you think would benefit from them. OK, so let's start with the UKI grew up in a place called Preston, Lancashire, which is quite close to Manchester. Now. It's not a big city, but it is a big town or a small city. I think the population is around 150,000, but then there are lots of small towns and villages that are part of the greater area, so it's quite a big place.
But growing up I used to go around and get around the city on my own quite a lot from quite an early age. And one of the things that I really liked, which looking back now I realise, is that there were pavements everywhere. In American English you use the term sidewalks, but growing up there, there were sidewalks and pavements everywhere, meaning that I could more or less travel around safely. And there were also a lot of zebra crossings.
In the US they call them crosswalks, where you can safely, hopefully in most cases, cross the road and cars will stop for you. And one thing about the UK is cars do stop for you if you go across a zebra crossing, there is this time you have to wait for them to slow down. But once they slow down and stop then you can in most cases safely cross the road. So when I used to go to my friends houses, I used to walk there quite a lot.
But then when I got a little bit older I started to ride my bike. So I got a bike and rode my bike everywhere for a certain amount of time. Now when we used to go to the city centre, the town centre, we used to take the bus and it was the number 32 bus I remember and it used to, or maybe it was 23, sometimes get confused with numbers that way. It was either 23 or 32. I think it used to cost 32P, 32 pence to take the bus to the to the town centre.
My friend and I used to save up money and yeah, take the bus, go to the centre of town and just buy things that we didn't really need. And then even when I got older, we used to take the bus to the centre of town to go to pubs and clubs. So get taking the bus in the UK is quite common now. When we used to travel to different cities and towns, we used to either drive, take the bus or most likely take the train.
Trains are good in the UK. So to get to different places, it's quite common to take the train. And I just want to say at this point as well, when you get to bigger cities like Manchester and especially London, there are many different options for you to get around the city. So generally speaking, there's the subway, there's also in Manchester, there's the tram, which is quite common.
Now, buses are very common too. People take taxis, but getting around big cities it's not common to take a car or it's not as common to take the car. Now let's move on to Spain now, because I lived in two cities in Spain, firstly in Bilbao and secondly in Valencia. And those two cities are big, so very big. In terms of the biggest cities in Spain, I think Valencia is #4 maybe Bilbao's five, maybe it's even #3 I can't remember now, but two big cities.
And in these cities we had endless options when it came to getting around them. So when I had when I was teaching language lessons, I used to either walk to places, take the bus that wasn't as common, take the underground or take a train. There was also a tram in both both places. And I think I actually took the tram the most because of where the language school was. But if I could and if I had time, I would walk. Generally speaking, I remember taking the tram on the way there
and then walking home. And it took me about 40 minutes, I think to walk home after teaching for the night. And I used to like doing that because at night it was a bit cooler, it wasn't as hot and I used to really just enjoy the walk. So All in all, the UK and Spain are very similar when it comes to getting around cities. I hadn't, I didn't really live in a place or spend a lot of time in a smaller town. So maybe that was different.
And I imagine it's it's probably quite similar to the UK where when you're living in a town, you still have really good public transport options and you can walk around the town or take the bike, take your bike. Now let's talk about the US because the US is very different compared to the UK and Spain, not so much in some of the big cities.
So let's take New York. If you've ever been to New York before, you'll know everyone takes the subway, people take buses, people walk, people take the the yellow cabs, people take Ubers. Now there are plenty of cycle lanes as well. So the US big cities like New York great for public transportation. Other big cities aren't aren't like that. I've spent quite a bit of time in Atlanta and what I remember from it is that the public transportation isn't as good.
Everyone seems to just get in their car and drive even on short distances. And the traffic in Atlanta is terrible. They have lanes that are, well, they have roads that have 9 lanes and they're completely full. And I remember there there wasn't a good subway option. I can't remember about the buses, but I've spent some time in Atlanta bus station, the main one, and it's, it's a scary place. So people don't tend to take the bus as much in the US.
And I think this is true of of the big cities too. I'd spent a bit of time in Houston, and there was a metro that you could take an Overground tram system. Austin wasn't the best for public transportation either. And let's go now to smaller cities where obviously they don't have subways because they're not big enough to have the subways or train systems. And generally speaking as well, the train system in the US isn't as developed as Europe.
I think being such a big country means that it's not as common. There are a lot of train systems in the North East between cities like Philadelphia, Washington DC, New York, Boston. But in the South where I live, and I'm sure in the Midwest and some of the West Coast too, trains just aren't popular at all. There aren't. There isn't a train station where I live, so you can't go to the train station and get a train somewhere.
There is a bus station, but again, the the thought of getting on a bus here, people tend don't tend to do it. If you're going to travel to another city, most people either drive there or take a flight. So flying between cities in the US is more common than Europe. From from my experience. Now the US is a lot of towns and cities and suburbs. They've been built with the car in mind. So there are a lot of people who live in suburbs.
These are outlying districts of a city and residential in nature where there are lots of detached houses that aren't terraces or condos or blocks of flats, but they're stand alone houses with a yard, a driveway, lots of garages. And people don't tend to park on the street. They tend to park on their driveway or in the garage. But one thing that I find is that there aren't sidewalks or pavements in British English in the suburbs.
So where we live, we live in a in the suburbs out of the sea, and there were no sidewalks anywhere, which I just still find very confusing. And I don't really like it too much because with children and just walking around in general, you have to walk on the road. So wherever you go, you're walking on the road, and this can be annoying because obviously it's not as safe. And taking children or dogs out,
it makes it even less safe. So this is something that I find that is all over America. When you get into the suburbs, especially when you're in big cities, there are sidewalks and pavements, but not in residential areas. And another example of why, of explaining how everything is about the car. A lot of bars and restaurants are in places where you can only get to by car. So in a lot of towns and cities, you have everything in the city centre and then some community bars and restaurants.
But here a lot of restaurants and bars and places to go, grocery stores and different shops. They're in places that are called strip malls, a strip mall, and I can explain the strip mall here, but I think it's also a good idea, if you can multitask, to go to Google Images and just type in strip mall because it's going to show
you examples. They're basically like a big building or two or three large buildings with different shops and restaurants and whatever you want to have in there and a big parking lot. And these are usually in places where, again, there are no sidewalks to get there. There are no sidewalks to get there. So you have to take the car in order to go get there. And this is something that I found quite strange there.
We do have some of this in the UK, but usually these are reserved for things like cinemas or bowling alleys, things like that, where you need a big building outside the city centre in order for it to work. But here it's very common in the US to have these strip malls. And again, you can't get there on foot. You can't really get there on on your bike. It's usually too dangerous. And if you want to get there on bus by bus, sorry, a little
preposition mistake there. Then again, you, they drop you off at the side of the road, usually on the grass, and then you have to cross the road with no crosswalk to try and get there. So pedestrian for pedestrians, it's very dangerous in the US and it's just, you just can't walk places. And this is something I miss so much. That's something I miss about the UK and Europe in general and Spain is that when I was going to a restaurant or bar, I walked there.
When I was going to my language school or a language lesson, I'd walk there if I could. I'd walk everywhere. We'd walk to get groceries. We didn't have a car in Spain. We just walked everywhere or took public transport. And then when you move to the US, especially if you go to the suburbs, then you just can't. You just can't walk places. It's impossible. It doesn't have the sidewalks or
or pavements to walk there for. For me to walk to a bar or a restaurant or a coffee shop or anywhere, it would be quite dangerous. And I've done it once before when I took my car to the mechanics and I had to walk home or I wanted to walk home to try it out. And it was pretty dangerous because there's not a lot of room on the side of the road for you to walk and you're walking on grass or walking on someone's property or the side of their property. And again, it's it's just not as
fun. So that is what I would love to see change in the US is something or cities and towns that would really focus on the pedestrian instead of the driver. And I don't know if that is going to change or not. It might change depending on different factors or what people want to invest in. And there is talk about investing in more train stations and and train lines so that people can move around the city or move from city to city on the train. But again, car, the car rules here.
Everyone needs a car if they want to get around town and the whole city and cities have been structured in a way that benefits the car. Things like no sidewalks, no really good bus stops, and lots of things that you can only get to by car such as bars, restaurants and shops in strip malls. OK, So what I'll do is I'll leave some of the key phrases from this podcast in the description so that you can just look that over.
And then I also just recommend looking at Google Images for things like strip malls and anything else that you want to just have a good image in your head. And then if you, again, if you've enjoyed this podcast episode, then please leave me a review. It would really benefit me and and help me reach more people who would benefit from these lessons.
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