Snafu is away, so someone has to deal with this.

Please do not use a bicycle for a half mile journey! You almost certainly won't save any time and you have nearly obliterated the meagre health benefits the journey would have lent you.

A half mile journey would take about 10 minutes at normal walking pace. Cycling is usually estimated to be about 3 times as fast as walking for the same effort, so you've saved yourself a whopping 6 minutes. Subtract from that the time it take you to fold/unfold or lock/unlock your bike (and remove fixtures), and you are likely to take longer, and at best the time savings would be meagre.

In places like Heidelberg, where dropping the kickstand and turning the key in the built in lock is all that is required, then you would save time by cycling, but even then, unless you were getting plenty of exercise or were planning onward journeys during the day, you'd be better off walking.

Years ago I went to a resort for work with British and American colleagues. The Americans were there before us and I was surprised and pleased to see they had hired bicycles. It turns out the cycles couldn't be taken from the resort, and it was only 5 minutes walk between most places we went in the resort. I don't think any brits bothered to hire bicycles.