By the California Department of Public Health ATRC Team
If a destination is close enough to walk to, what keeps people from walking there? A 2025 CDC study asked U.S. adults what prevented them from regularly walking to places within a 10-minute walk of home. Nearly 8 in 10 reported at least one barrier. Hot or humid conditions were the most common reason at 36 percent, followed by having no places they wanted or needed to walk to at 25 percent, preferring to drive or be driven at 22 percent, and finding walking inconvenient at 22 percent. Missing or poorly maintained sidewalks and feeling unsafe were also reported barriers.
The findings offer an important reminder for active transportation practitioners: proximity creates an opportunity to walk, but it does not tell us whether someone will make the trip on foot. The reasons people do not walk can involve comfort, access to useful destinations, safety, convenience, personal circumstances, or preferences. Understanding those reasons can help local agencies determine whether infrastructure improvements, non-infrastructure (NI) activities, or a combination of strategies may be appropriate.
Conducting robust community engagement can help us learn which destinations residents most frequent, what mode of transportation is used to reach them, and what makes walking to them difficult or inconvenient. One form of community engagement is conducting focus groups, and this Active Transportation Focus Group Facilitator’s Guide is designed to help gather meaningful input and provides facilitation tips and discussion questions that can be adapted to fit community needs.
What agencies learn can then inform strategies that respond to the specific barriers residents identify. For example, some agencies may learn that residents are more likely to walk when they can participate in walking groups that simultaneously build confidence with navigating local routes to reach destinations. ATRC’s NI Common Activities Fact Sheet provide a list of common NI activities that can support active transportation.
Other barriers require different approaches. NI cannot resolve a missing sidewalk or unsafe crossing, and communities cannot change hot weather. They can, however, use what they learn through NI engagement to inform other decisions. For heat, ATRC’s Designing Resilient Streets through Green Infrastructure Webinar and accompanying resource document show how greening can reduce heat exposure and be incorporated into ATP projects and provide implementers with additional resources and funding opportunities.
Although the CDC study examined walking, its underlying lesson has broader relevance to active transportation. Before selecting an intervention, understanding what influences people’s decisions can help agencies choose strategies that address the barrier. For destinations already within walking distance, NI programming can help make reaching nearby destinations via active transportation a more practical part of everyday trips. Clearly identifying the factors preventing people from using active modes and applying the interventions and strategies to overcome those barriers is crucial for drafting a strong narrative within ATP applications.