Thuppal: Students, take a step back and take a walk

I think I began to realize how much I had stopped walking the last time I decided to take a Port… I think I began to realize how much I had stopped walking the last time I decided to take a Port Authority bus four blocks from my house to the Cathedral. A quick flash of your Pitt ID and it’s a convenient Port Authority ride for you. In reality it’s quite a shame, especially since the streets and ample sidewalks around Oakland provide plenty of opportunity for walking.

With our fast-paced, party-all-weekend, study-all-week, sleep-‘til-five-minutes-before-class lifestyles, walking everywhere hardly seems an option. This isn’t just the winter weather talking. We have this mentality all year round.

Unfortunately, we might be overlooking one of the easiest ways to stay in shape and save money. In the last few years, Americans’ waistlines have grown while high gas prices have made our pockets shrink.

Will starting to walk more often eliminate obesity and drastically reduce our dependence on foreign oil? Probably not. But it’s a step in the right direction.

One only needs to look at the story of John Francis to see that while walking can be inconvenient, it is far from impossible. In the ’70s, Francis witnessed an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay and understood the detriments of a life revolving around petroleum.

Following this incident, Francis decided to divorce himself from oil by forgoing any mode of motorized transport. At first, such a task seemed impossible. His friends told him that they would join him, but only after they had enough time and money.

A true rebel, Francis, who wrote a book about his life, wasn’t willing to dismiss his new idea because of financial constraints. He went ahead with his walking project but quickly found that not everyone was enthusiastic about it. Without a car, Francis was unable to hold a steady job and found that his personal relationships also suffered.

Such sacrifice is rather impractical, but Francis’ trials do shed reason on why we are so reluctant to walk.

I hail from Mt. Lebanon, Pa., — a community that doesn’t have school buses — and I believe that our disinclination toward walking is a result of how we’ve laid out our cities and towns, not our laziness. Yes, people are still buying cars to get around, but one still has the option to walk from home to school or to the park.

The fact is, most house-hunters nowadays aren’t looking for walkable communities. We’re after the spacious houses with two-car garages and big, green front lawns. That’s why neighborhoods that are set up like Mt. Lebanon are so few in number. Instead, we’re seeing the rise of sprawling developments where cars are the only means of getting to a grocery store, bank or offices.

Even if you are determined to walk somewhere, it feels as though the towns we live in are working against us. With 35-miles-per-hour traffic racing through our intersections, a car might be the only way to stay safe on the roads.

In truth, the idea of walkable towns isn’t without merit. Since 2006, the German suburb of Vauban has been boasting streets without cars and houses without garages. Seventy percent of the town’s residents don’t own a car and nearly 60 percent of them sold their cars to move there.

Some traditional suburbs have laws that only allow residential development. Vauban is different, and it has commercial districts within walking distance of almost every home. The only cars in town are located in garages on the outskirts of the development and are used for longer road trips.

In spite of such possibilities, Americans are quite attached to their cars. Automobiles have made birthdays of 16 years a big deal and having a set of wheels in your garage is a sign of independence.

In spite of all that glamour, consider that motor vehicles contribute nearly one quarter of annual carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. In an era when we are claiming environmental consciousness, building walkable communities, not hybrids, would be a wise — albeit, at this point unfortunately almost radical — idea.

E-mail Hay at hat23@pitt.edu.