takes XXX km's trip? with XXX population?

Question

Is the following sentence grammatical?

It takes 16 km and 25 km’s trip to go to Bransdon (with 15,000 population) and Cransdon (with 29,000 population) respectively.

I have two doubts:

• Can one really say "it takes 16 km and 25 km's trip to go to ..."?

  First, I think one can only say "it takes xxx hours to go to xxx" (takes time, not distance)​ Second, suppose one can say "it takes xxx km", is it correct to say "it takes a 16 km's trip"?​

• Can one really say "with xxx population"?

  I think one can only say "with a population of xxx". Is this correct?​

Answer 1

However, you can say it's a 16 km. trip to Bransdon (pop. 15,000). It might be clearer to go on … and a 25 km. trip to Cransdon... rather than quoting both figures together and using respectively.

Answer 2

You are correct. 'It takes' is most idiomatically used to refer to a time, so the statement implies that "16 km and 25 km’s trip" is the time to go to Bradson...and Cransdon...

For example, 'It takes 5 minutes to go to Sara's house and Ana's house; this means Sara's house and Ana's house are 5 minutes away from the current location. Now replace the 5 minutes with "16 km and 25 km’s trip" and Sara's house and Ana's house with Bradson...and Cransdon.... You can see that it does not make any sense.

'With' is a very context dependent preposition. 15000 population and 29000 population are meant to modify the respective towns, and so it is best to say ...Bradson, which has a population of 15000, and Crandson, which has a population of 29000. Saying ...to go to Bradson (with population of 15000) sounds like you went to Bradson with 15000 people, similar to saying 'I went to Alaska with my girlfriend'. The parentheses makes the situation slightly better I suppose, but I would always use a relative pronoun (e.g. which, who etc.) to refer to an inherent quality in a noun.