This kind of design sounds completely insane.

That's American city design for you. The cities are designed expecting that everybody has a car, so they're sprawling, especially in the suburbs. Public transit is simply tacked on later and is very limited in range, and is almost always buses, very few trains. You'd have to be seriously lucky to live near a bus stop in the suburbs.

By the way, I can walk to the nearest grocery store in less than 15 minutes, so I feel good about that, at least. It's very rare for the suburbs to be in walking distance of a grocery store.