When walking is actually the faster option

Walking is faster than driving for more short trips than people expect — once you count door-to-door time. Here's when it wins.

1. Trips under half a mile.

Walking 0.5 miles takes about 10 minutes. Driving the same distance often takes longer once you count the trip to your car, traffic, and the trip from parking to the door. The shorter the trip, the more lopsided the math.

2. Anywhere parking is hard.

Cambridge, Somerville, the Seaport, downtown Boston, anywhere near a hospital or a college — if you'd spend 5-10 minutes hunting for a spot, walking from a few blocks farther out is often faster door-to-door.

3. Round trips with multiple stops.

Need to grab coffee, drop off a package, and pick something up at the pharmacy on the same block? Walking handles a chained errand without the park-and-re-park overhead at each stop.

4. Rush hour, when traffic is bad.

A 1-mile drive in stop-and-go traffic can easily take 10-15 minutes. A 1-mile walk is 20 minutes — sometimes faster than the drive, almost always more pleasant.

5. What walking does that GPS doesn't track.

A 15-minute walk burns about 60 calories, lets you notice your neighborhood, and ends with you in a better mood than you started.