National Walk to Work Day turns 19 this Friday. Is it time to kick it out of the house? Started in 2004 by the federal government and the American Podiatric Medical Association — as if only our feet benefit from walking — the holiday has always been strangely tone deaf about the daily reality of most American commuters.

More than three quarters of us get to work by car. Most of us do this not because we want to, but because we have no good alternative. Seventy-five years of sprawl, highway building, and transit disinvestment have created a national landscape that makes car ownership an obligation for almost everyone. The automobile is no longer an instrument of freedom, but rather a bulky, expensive, and dangerous prosthetic device, a prerequisite to viable citizenship.

Some holiday messaging reflects this reality. Here’s the blog of Just Energy, an electrical and natural gas provider across the U.S. and Canada: “If you drive, see if there is a place you can park 15 minutes from your office to cut down on your drive time and get your feet on the street.”