Walking to Town: Proposed Tesco vs Existing Sainsbury

Vegetables on the Market
Originally uploaded by tescocampaign.

Last month, we used google maps to find out how far each of the existing grocery stores in St. Albans are from the site of the proposed Tesco.

We found 4 grocery stores within walking distance: Iceland (0.2mi), Marks & Spencer (0.5), Tesco (0.6) and Sainsbury (0.8). We also found a further two stores, Morrison (1.3mi) and Waitrose (1.8mi), an easy bus journey or car ride away.

Tesco has said that they expect shoppers at the store to do the following in two hours or less:

1. Park their car in free Tesco carpark
2. Do weekly shopping inside store
3. Put groceries into boot of car (where some of it will thaw, melt, etc)
4. Walk the half mile or more up a hill into town
5. Continue shopping, perhaps at local businesses or the market
6. Walk back to car, half a mile or more away
7. Exit car park

So is that what people will really do, or will the new Tesco act as a barrier to the shops and market in the centre of the City? We decided to do our own bit of math to see if we could shed some light on what could happen.

The current Sainsbury is located at Everard Close, St Albans AL1 2QU. This location is next to the Abbey Line station and across the road from Westminster Lodge , a local recreational facility. There are views from the car park of Sainsbury to St. Albans Abbey, views which, one would think, would encourage people to park their cars at Sainsbury and walk up the hill to town.

So how long a walk is it?

Well, it turns out that the Sainsbury is 0.7 mile from the center of St. Albans Market - that's just 0.1 of a mile further than the proposed Tesco will be.

Do people do their weekly shopping at Sainsbury, leave their cars to walk to town, complete their shopping, then walk back? Not that we've ever heard of...