essay on walking is better than different means of transportation
Answers
Walking as a transport mode
Walking as a means of transport is commonly used for rather short trips. This means that it is actually difficult to assess pedestrian mobility at country level, as the national travel surveys often do not register the shorter trips. Also, the walking parts of trips made primarily by public transport are usually not taken into account. At present, the importance of walking is therefore underestimated [60].
Survey data from a selection of seven European countries show that 12-30% of all trips is made by walking (as main transport mode), the highest figure being for Great Britain [34]. For short trips under 5 km, the share of walking is higher, with a maximum of 45% in Great Britain. The average length of walking trips varies from just under 1 km (Great Britain) to 2.8 km (Finland). It should be noted, however, that the extent of coverage of short trips may vary from country to country in the national travel surveys. This will affect the comparability of average trip length and the share of walking. In Great Britain, all trip lengths are included, whereas in Denmark trips shorter than 300 metres are excluded from the survey and all trips between 300 and 1500 metres are recorded to be 1 km [34].
Walking is a way of travelling used mainly for two purposes: short trips to specific destinations such as shops when there is probably not too much to carry, and leisure trips where the walking in itself is the main purpose [28]. About 15-30% of all person kilometres walked (on an average day) is for shopping purposes. Home-leisure trips cover about 30-55% of the person kilometres, with Switzerland at the top and Finland at the bottom [34].