I live similarly (in the Stockholm suburbs), but I live near a metro station, and there is a reasonably good, not too expensive chain grocery next to the metro station. I get lots of things there, but there are a few things I need that they don't have, and for those things, I travel (by public transportation) to larger stores farther away.

On the one hand, haroldp is correct in that the automobile-centered infrastructure enables the coercion of people to travel farther to shop for groceries. But that point doesn't really contradict the article; this coercion is also enabled by the failure to enforce laws that are on the books. I'd argue that there are far, far too few independent groceries in Stockholm, for example, for reasons that have nothing to do with the transportation infrastructure and everything to do with the lack of effective antitrust legislation, or lack of enforcement (I actually don't know which it is).