You do realize that if you can't walk, you aren't very likely to be riding a bike either.

Nor are either a very viable grocery conveyance.

Even assuming a big backpack, and a large basket on the scooter or bike, you can't do much shopping. So you're now expecting people with mobility issues to go more often, spend more time tramping around a store, with their already limited stamina and resources.

That's not even mentioning that a mobility scooter has limited range, and requires maintenance that anyone needing one is unlikely to be able to do themselves. Which means another trip somewhere to get that done.

Look, not everyone thinks about this stuff until they have no choice in the matter. But not only did I take care of the elderly, dying, and disabled for a living for twenty years, I stopped doing that because I'm disabled now too. And us cripples have communication.

I'm straight up telling you that anyone unable to walk to a store is not going to be able to make do with bikes and scooters. It just ain't happening on any kind of regular basis unless you live somewhere that the stores are under a five minute walk, and even then that's going to be a horrible time any foul weather days.

When you're having mobility issues serious enough to need a scooter or chair, you aren't in a situation where haring off to a grocery store every few days is sustainable. It just isn't.

There's this thing called the spoon analogy. It's a disability thing you run into.

Every day, we wake up with some spoons. Everything we do costs spoons.

The typical healthy person starts out with the usual number of spoons. You start with 20. Getting your shower costs a spoon. Walking to work costs a spoon. Shopping costs a spoon. Cooking costs a spoon. You get the idea, I assume.

Well, us cripples start the day with 15, or even less. Getting the shower costs two. Shopping costs two. Cooking costs three. Again, I'm confident you get the idea.

That's the thing that nobody ever considers. Once you reach a point where you would have access to a mobility scooter or chair, you're spending spoons left and right. You can't just stop by the store on the way down the block from the bus that dropped you off after work. Every task costs. So you have to do your shopping in big batches. You're also going to be fixed income most of the time, so shopping in bulk is pretty much the way you have to shop to be able to keep a realistic budget.

Now, there's ways to fix all of that. But it ain't something you fix by public transport. Doesn't matter if there's a bus or light rail when just waiting for the damn things is a spoon from your supply. Then the ride is slower, so that's another.

The way to fix that that's the most kind is to subsidize shopping delivery the way you'd set up parcel post. Or set up shared transport that ferries the disabled directly to and from places in a realistic, bearable time frame. You could maybe hybridize that.

It's all fine and good to improve the clusterfuck that is transportation and infrastructure. Gods, please, we need it bad. But we can't pretend that trains and buses are going to magically fix it all, or that the same fixes that will work in a city will work everywhere else, or vice versa.

Yeah so I guess I'd always imagined that the closest you can really get given the laws of physics to instant travel would be disintegration+information transfer+matter synthesis. But matter synthesis is probably ruled out by the amount of energy required to do anything, and the complexity of correct assembly. Still, fun to think about.