To walk or not to walk

When we were younger, in our high school days, and while having vacations in our ancestral home in Hinobaan, Negros Occidental, a cousin of mine and I used to walk two kilometers just to visit the young ladies we were courting.  Our cousins and aunts would then make fun of us, telling everybody we loved the ladies so much we endured the 2 km. walk.  That had been a joke for years, though my cousin eventually married the love of his life and they continue to live happily unto this day.  Me, I took a different path and moved on.

But that's not the theme of this column, is it?  What we wish to highlight is that walking for 2 km. was not something we had to "endure."  It became a frequent teasing joke of our cousins, but really, walking was just second nature, especially when you had no choice.  In a far-flung municipality, which in the 70s we considered "far from civilization" (meaning, city), we walk everyday.  There was only one provincial bus that passes by our houses daily, there might be a "fiera" (Ford Fiera "jeepney") or two, but mostly we walk, bike, or ride borrowed motorcycles.

Even to this day, walking is considered a mode of transport in many rural parts of the Philippines.  Compare that to our urban cities where when you ask what transport you use, you never hear walking as one of the options.  Of course, in many cases, there is always walking involved in the last leg of a day's travel to work or school and back, but usually not in the degree that is considered a mode of travel.  City folks will immediately complain if you ask them to walk, even if it is only a portion of their entire daily travel routine.

Yet you find a considerable number of urbanites who would drive their cars all the way to the gym in order to walk or jog 3 km. on a treadmill!  In this day and time, everyone knows the health and wellness benefits of exercise, and walking is considered one of the best forms.  Rich people jog or walk within their walled subdivisions, others go to the gym, while quite a few use the oval tracks of public sports centers.  I know of a friend whose office is in the basement of a hotel, who walks around, daily, up and down the carpeted halls of that hotel.

On closer look, walking actually has a myriad of benefits rolled into one.  Not only is it very good for a healthy body, it is good for the environment.  Almost all other kinds of transport, except bicycles, involves the use of natural resources, resulting in undesirable after-products causing pollution, as well as contributing to global warming.  Substituting walking over the use of vehicles is also economically advantageous - you would save what you would have paid for in jeepney/bus/LRT fares.  Not to mention more social benefits.

What prevents us from walking then?  It's this thing about walkability.  People might like "a walk in the park" but the state of our sidewalks and other access infrastructure leaves much to be desired.  There's this section of the sidewalk at the MRT Ortigas station outside of ADB, where people are squeezed into a narrow walkway 0.40 meters wide.  More often than not, you also see cars parked on sidewalks forcing pedestrians to walk on the road, further constricting traffic flow.  Not to mention sidewalk vendors.

In places where people can actually walk, surfaces are uneven, riddled with potholes, and are often blocked by trees or utility poles.  Trees are environmentally desirable, too, but why should these be prioritized over pedestrians when there are a thousand other places where they can be.  Of course, when it rains, nobody wants to walk because most of our sidewalks are not covered.  And no one wants to splash around in the mud or murky waters.

Ironically, the most "unwalkable" areas of our cities are found along public transport terminals and schools, as we found out in walkability studies that Clean Air Initiative (CAI)-Asia did in 2011.  That's adding insult to injury.  While public transport is deemed crucial to the attainment of sustainable transport, we make areas around them unwalkable (like Ortigas Station).  I look at a country that enhances public transportation and promotes non-motorized transport, as already achieving 90 percent of what it takes to have sustainable transport.

In the countryside, people walk as part of their daily routine.  In cities we make all kinds of barriers to deter people from walking.  We squeeze them in, place an obstacle course, make them fall in line, or organize systems where they walk a kilometer just to transfer vehicles.  All the more inducing a dreamlike state where all they think about is earning as fast as they can enough to buy a car.  Then they shift from one problem to another.