The hidden benefits of walking: is speed stealing our time and money?

Abstract

There may be other benefits of walking that have remained largely hidden, even from those working in transport research. One of these hidden benefits is that walking can save you time and money. This may seem counterintuitive. We can only see this hidden benefit of walking if we understand the concept of effective speed: a holistic way of evaluating speed in which all the time costs of a mode of transport are taken into account. The paper provides two examples that show how walking can save us time and money, and how faster forms of transport steal our time and money without most of us realising this. The first example involves a comparison of two suburban scenarios, one in which most children walk to school, and the other in which parents 'save time' by driving their children to school. The second example examines real data for transport geography students at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA), comparing the effective speeds of walking and using taxis for a journey frequently made by cadets, from the city to ADFA. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E215407.

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