There is probably a trip in your week that is almost too short to call a trip. Maybe to the post office. A coffee shop. The pharmacy. A neighbor’s house. The library. The corner store. A meeting a few blocks away. Or, if you have children, the trip to school.

Those little drives don’t use much fuel on their own. But they have an unfortunate combination of characteristics: they’re short enough to walk, and they’re often made just after starting a cold engine, when a gasoline car is least efficient, and its pollution controls haven't fully warmed up.

This week, pick one trip of about a half-mile that you’d normally drive, and walk it instead.

This is a step along the Movement pathway: the sustainable choices we make about how we and our things get from place to place. Some changes along this pathway take money and/or years; that could include a different car, a different commute, a community designed around something other than driving. But this week’s step is much easier! It saves you a little money in exchange for a little time and effort, and it helps the planet a little too.

Peggy’s take: Although it's important to consider the difference between driving a fuel-burning car and choosing to walk, I drive an electric vehicle, and I also need to ask myself why I might choose to walk instead of drive. The health benefits of walking are another reason to take this step this week, even if you drive an EV.

A good week to reconsider a short trip

The first Wednesday in October is National Walk & Roll to School Day in the United States, coordinated by the National Center for Safe Routes to School. Thousands of schools participate each year, encouraging children and families to walk, bike, or roll instead of driving to and from school.

It is a good idea for schools. It’s also a good reminder for the rest of us.

A half-mile is roughly a ten-minute walk for many adults. That means plenty of destinations we routinely reach by car are close enough to reach on foot without reorganizing the day around them. The National Household Travel Survey shows just how strongly distance affects whether children walk to school: more than 80 percent of children living within a quarter-mile typically walk, and more than half of those living between a quarter-mile and half-mile do. Once a destination feels close enough, walking is normal.

The environmental benefits accrue as the car stays parked.

EPA estimates that an average fuel-burning passenger vehicle emits about 400 grams of carbon dioxide per mile from its tailpipe. That’s about 0.9 pounds of CO₂ for a one-mile round trip, or half a mile there and half a mile back. Do that once a week for a year, and you’ve prevented dozens of pounds of tailpipe pollution without buying anything, installing anything, or changing vehicles.

But carbon dioxide pollution isn’t the only reason short trips matter.

Modern gasoline cars have systems that handle some kinds of air pollution once their engines and catalytic converters are hot. But engines don’t start hot. Research on cold starts finds that the first few minutes can account for a disproportionate share of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and particle pollution per mile compared to longer trips. In one study of trips shorter than five kilometers in a vehicle with a fully cooled engine (such as when a vehicle is parked overnight), starting the engine accounted for more than 90 percent of carbon monoxide emissions and, in some conditions, more than 80 percent of particle-number emissions. The exact numbers vary enormously by vehicle, weather, and driving conditions, but the pattern is consistent: starting a fuel-burning engine causes pollution that escapes before the catalytic converter becomes fully effective.

Short trips also hurt fuel economy. The U.S. Department of Energy and EPA report that several short trips from cold starts can use roughly twice as much fuel as a single trip covering the same total distance with a warmed-up engine. The penalty is even larger in cold weather as it takes longer for an engine to reach optimal operating temperatures.

So if you’re going to replace one short car trip with walking, the first trip of the day, which begins with a cold engine, is an especially good one to choose, especially if you drive a fuel-burning vehicle.

School is one destination. What is yours?

If you have children in school, Walk & Roll to School Day gives you an obvious place to take this week’s one step. Check whether your school is participating. If it isn’t, consider sharing the idea with the school administration or a teacher so your school might participate next year.

If children aren’t part of your daily routine, look at the trips you make without thinking much about them.

Maybe you drive half a mile to get coffee on Saturday morning.

Maybe your nearest post office is eight blocks away.

Maybe you drive to a neighborhood trailhead so you can, well, go for a walk.

You get the idea. Those are all opportunities to do a little to help save our planet by walking instead of driving.

You can also look for trips where the walk itself adds something. Walk to meet a friend instead of driving to see them. Walk to lunch with a coworker. If you have grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or young neighbors nearby, offer to walk with them to school. The destination matters far less than spending the time together.

The half-mile experiment

Try one trip.

Think of somewhere you regularly drive that’s about half a mile away. The exact distance doesn’t matter. What matters is that when you picture going there, you imagine reaching for the car keys, but when you reimagine it, you see a way to walk.

The next time you make that trip, try walking the whole way. Then pay attention to the details of the journey. How long did the walk really take? Was the experience pleasant or stressful? Did you choose the right gear for the weather conditions? Did the trip feel like lost time—or did ten minutes exercising outside feel better than ten minutes driving?

There are plenty of legitimate reasons not to walk a particular trip: ability, road safety, weather, heavy loads, tight schedules, or communities where walking infrastructure simply isn’t adequate.

Not every short trip is practical to walk. Your challenge this week is to find ones that are practical for you.

Your one step this week

Choose one destination about a half-mile away that you would ordinarily reach by car. Walk there instead.

If you’re connected to a school, National Walk & Roll to School Day, the first Wednesday in October, gives you a ready-made opportunity. You can check whether your school is participating at walkbiketoschool.org.

If school isn’t part of your life, establish your own Walk & Roll day. Walk to coffee. Walk to lunch. Walk to the library. Walk to an appointment. Walk to visit someone. Walk to do one small errand instead of driving.

What matters is discovering a trip that seemed like it needed a car but turned out better without one. If the experiment works, do it again next week. Turn that journey from being “a trip I could walk” to simply “a place I walk to.”

To go deeper into the Movement pathway and explore more of the choices you make about getting yourself and your things from place to place, take a look at Sustainable Practices: Your Handbook for Effective Action and www.suspra.com. Our One Step archive at www.SustainablePractice.Life has more ways to turn one good week into an ongoing practice.

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