Everyday
What if I walked instead of drove?
Short answer: walking a 2 km trip instead of driving it saves about £144 a year in running costs and adds about 154 hours of walking, roughly 19 minutes a trip. Enter your own trip below.
What is the estimated time and money difference if a repeated short trip is walked rather than driven?
Most trips in England are local. In the National Travel Survey, people make around eighteen trips a week, and a large share of those are short enough that walking is physically possible even if it is not the habit. This page compares the estimated difference between driving a repeated journey and walking it: a simplified fuel-and-wear cost per kilometre on one side, extra minutes on the other. It does not score health, air quality or carbon, and it does not claim walking is the better choice. Weather, hills, children, shopping bags and safe pavements sit outside the arithmetic unless you fold them into the speeds or the cost. Change the distance and the weekly rhythm; the interesting result is usually the time–money pair, not a ranking.
Written and checked by Aivora Digital · Last updated:
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Results update as you move the controls.
A local hop, not a motorway trip.
Count each one-way trip.
Simplified fuel and wear, not full ownership.
Urban averages are much lower than the speed limit.
Your result
£144
estimated amount not spent
Compared with driving the same trips, using your cost per km.
- Walking distance
- 960 km
- Extra time walking
- 154 hours
- Journeys switched
- 480
- Time if you drove
- 38 hours
About 596.5 miles over 48 weeks.
153.6 hours in total; 19 minutes more per journey.
10 one-way trips a week.
What does that mean?
Compared with driving, walking those 480 journeys is estimated as lower spend of £144 on fuel and wear, and about 154 hours more travel time. That is a comparison of the estimated difference, not a verdict on the better routine.
At a glance
- Walk time (hours)192 hours
- Drive time (hours)38 hours
Compare
| Walk time each way | 24 min |
|---|---|
| Drive time each way | 5 min |
| Estimated driving cost avoided | £144 |
Compare scenarios
Short trips are where the habit lives
Energy Saving Trust notes that a large majority of UK journeys are under five miles. Those are the trips where a car is often used as a default rather than because the distance demands it. This model treats one journey length and a weekly count — a school run, a station hop, a lunchtime shop — and multiplies them across the weeks you enter. It is a repeated-routine calculator, not a map of your whole week.
Time is the other axis
Walking is slower than even a congested urban drive once you include the whole door-to-door walk. A default 5 km/h pace is a brisk but ordinary walk; urban driving at 25 km/h already folds in lights and parking searches better than a free-flow speed limit would. The extra hours are the cost of the swap. Whether those hours feel wasted, pleasant, or usable as thinking time is not something a slider can decide.
What the cost per kilometre is doing
The default £0.15 per km is a simplified stand-in for fuel plus a little wear — closer to an energy cost than to HMRC’s full mileage allowance, which also covers standing costs. Insurance, tax, parking and depreciation barely move if you drop a two-kilometre trip. If you want a fuller motoring cost, raise the rate, or use the experiment that stops using the car altogether.
Worked example: a 2 km school or station run
Take a 2 km trip made 10 times a week for 48 weeks a year, using this page’s default speeds.
- Walking at 5 km/h: 24 minutes each way. Driving door to door at 25 km/h: about 5 minutes.
- Extra time per trip: about 19 minutes. Over 480 trips a year that is about 154 hours.
- Fuel and wear saved at 15p per km: 480 × 2 km × £0.15 = £144 a year.
- For comparison, HMRC’s approved mileage rate for business travel by car is 55p a mile for the first 10,000 miles, which covers all running costs, not just fuel.
Walking a 2 km trip instead of driving it saves about £144 a year in running costs and adds about 154 hours of walking, roughly 19 minutes a trip.
What people get wrong
- “Driving is always much quicker for short trips.”
- On a 2 km urban trip the gap is often under 20 minutes. Finding a space, walking from the car park and waiting at junctions all count, and the model’s 25 km/h door-to-door speed already allows for some of that.
- “Hardly anyone walks anywhere any more.”
- In England in 2023, walking made up 29% of all trips, and 81% of trips under a mile were walked. The average walking trip was 0.7 miles.
- “Leaving the car at home saves the full mileage rate.”
- Insurance, tax and depreciation are mostly paid whether you drive or not. Dropping short trips mainly saves fuel and some wear, which is why this page uses 15p per km.
Common questions
How much faster is driving than walking?
At this page’s default door-to-door speeds, driving at 25 km/h is five times faster than walking at 5 km/h. On open roads the gap is bigger; on short town trips with parking it is often smaller.
How long does it take to walk 2 km?
About 24 minutes at 5 km/h, a steady everyday pace. A brisk walk at 6 km/h takes 20 minutes.
How we calculated this
Journeys = journeys per week × weeks. Walking distance = journeys × one-way distance. Driving cost avoided = distance × cost per km (walking is treated as zero money cost). Walking time = distance ÷ walking speed; driving time = distance ÷ driving speed; extra time = walking time − driving time. Speeds are average door-to-door figures, not peak or hill-adjusted. No calorie, fitness or emissions model is applied. This experiment provides estimates for educational purposes and is not financial advice. Actual results vary depending on rates, fees, taxes, inflation and individual circumstances.
Assumptions and limitations
This is a simplified estimate. Actual results depend on factors the model does not include.
This experiment provides estimates for educational purposes and is not financial advice. Actual results vary depending on rates, fees, taxes, inflation and individual circumstances.
- Each journey is one-way at the distance you enter; return trips should be counted as two journeys.
- Walking is assigned no money cost (shoes, time value and weather kit are omitted).
- Cost per kilometre is a simplified fuel-and-wear figure, not a full cost of motoring.
- Average speeds include ordinary delays only if you set them that way.
- The route is assumed walkable and equally direct for both modes.
- Weeks default to 48 to leave a little space for holidays and off weeks.
Sources
- Department for Transport — National Travel Survey 2023
Official statistics on how often people in England travel, by mode and purpose, including short trips and time spent travelling.
- Energy Saving Trust — sustainable travel hierarchy
Places walking and wheeling above private car use for short journeys, and notes that most UK trips are under five miles.
- RAC Foundation — motoring price index
Tracks how fuel, insurance, tax and maintenance move over time, useful context for a simplified cost-per-km slider.
- DfT — Walking and cycling statistics, England: 2023
Walking was 29% of trips in 2023, 81% of trips under a mile were walked and the average walking trip was 0.7 miles.
- HMRC — Travel mileage and fuel rates and allowances
Approved mileage rate for cars and vans: 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles.
Go further
Related experiments that pick up where this one leaves off.
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