Strolling into Our Futures
For us adolescents, turning sixteen was a big milestone in our lives. It marked a point in time where we began to realize that our childhood days were wearing thin and represented a light at the end of the long tunnel of primary education — but most importantly, we could finally get our driver’s licenses and experience the tremendous, overwhelming freedom that came with them.
In my junior year of high school, most of my friends were going through the process of getting their licenses and purchasing their first cars. But I wasn’t one of them. I had no real interest in practicing for the driving test and preferred to walk until it became imperative for me to learn. I’m nineteen now, a freshman in college and have just recently received my license. I would be lying if I said that practicing hard and finally passing the test wasn’t one of the most gratifying feelings I’ve had in awhile, and that being able to drive to several different cities at my leisure wasn’t a liberating sensation. However, the experience also made me view my time as a permanent pedestrian in a very different light.
As I walked to school everyday during my junior and senior years, I would often hear my name shouted out by friends from the driver’s seats of their new cars. I would greet them, and continue on my way, strolling past the seemingly endless line of traffic of sleep-deprived moms and panicked students. It always baffled me how I would always manage to beat my friends to school, despite them utilizing the historically conventional, supposedly more convenient travel method.
Memories like these have recently reminded me how overlooked the walking student is, and just how much pressure we place on sixteen year olds to instantly get their license. Not only this, but the common narrative is that driving will make your daily commute to school easier. On the contrary, driving to school is often less convenient, more stressful, and generally unnecessary. In addition, the environmental and economic upsides of choosing to walk drastically outweigh the value of driving as any sort of status symbol.
A considerable portion of high school students live within one to two miles of their school, in which case driving during rush hour to get there is simply impractical, as was my situation. As I mentioned before, the traffic would be so bad on the street school rested on that many students would be late every day. It was very common for several of my classmates to rush into first period thirty seconds after the bell rang, looking as if they were about to collapse. I know for a fact that many of my friends were within walking distance of school, and could have easily taken that route instead of the alternative that left them stressed and disoriented before the day had even begun.
Walking became a de-stressor for me in more ways than one. It was always a consistent source of simple exercise that left me satisfied if I didn’t get to work out later in the day. Luckily for me, there was a rather large hill between me and my school, which I descended in the morning and ascended in the afternoon. Yes, there were moments when it was a pain to climb after a long day, but I always felt a subtle sense of accomplishment after I made the trek up and eventually to my house. Beyond the physical side of things, the routine gave me time to collect my thoughts in the morning and prepare myself for the day. Once I got to school, I felt as though I was immediately ready to get into the work of my first class, a feeling I know many of my peers who drove were lacking.
For me it seemed economically unjustifiable to replace a brief walk with a costly, rushed drive. Gas, among most other commodities, is expensive in California, a fact I am learning the hard way in the weeks following my successful driving test. Based on statistics from the U.S Energy Information Administration (EIA), from the month I would have been able to drive to school (December 2016) to the month I graduated (June 2018), average gas prices bottomed out at $2.68 per gallon, and peaked at $3.62 per gallon. This is not taking into account any necessary maintenance costs and monthly insurance. Those are costs I would not have been able to keep up with due to my limited work schedule. This is a facet of driving that most of my friends struggled with, often leading to conversations griping about their upcoming payment dates. Looking back, I wish I had the foresight to remind them that walking has always cost $0 to take advantage of.
And yet the benefits to the environment are still the most appealing aspect of walking for me. Consuming all that aforementioned expensive gas adds a lot to our carbon footprint, yet has become an unavoidable routine by most people. In 2016, the EIA reported that transportation added roughly 213 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in California alone. This is a number that has only gone up in the three years following that measurement. These emissions will likely never be reversed, and will have a permanent impact on the course of climate change in the coming years. With the Green New Deal becoming a talking point across the nation, and the existential threat of climate change looming in the back of most young people’s minds, it is a habit we have got to kick. Given the fact that my young generation has recently taken it upon themselves to begin shaping a progressive, sustainable future for everyone, it is distressing for me to see the impacts of our ceaseless, impractical driving swept by the wayside in favor of discussing more easily dissected topics. It baffles me that we have the opportunity to make a real positive change on our carbon footprint, but have yet to seize it.
Luckily for me, I was not left walking to school alone, even after turning sixteen. According to Let’s Get Healthy California, the percent of students between twelve and seventeen who elected to walk, skate, or bike to school was about 41.4% in California. While this is actually down from recent previous years, it represents a trend of potential growth in the popularity of walking. Broadly speaking, this statistic shows that almost half of all primary school students in California alone were not driving or being driven to school. I was very surprised upon reading this, as it is definitely not reflective of my experience with the daily high school commute. Regardless, it is clear evidence that things are gradually changing in the way we think about getting to class.
After all, a driver’s license is not the same thing as a school ID, and it should never be treated as one. If you are a student like I was and are feeling inadequate or inferior due to being the only one out of your friend group to walk to school, know that you don’t have to. In fact, you are making a smarter choice for your financial and environmental future, and are demonstrating a higher level of forward thinking than may be obvious. Besides, driving may be fun and liberating, but it brings about a whole host of extra worries that hard-working students like you sure don’t need.
