Heightening Walking Above its Pedestrian Status : Walking and Travel Behavior in California

Blumenberg, Evelyn A.; Bridges, Kate; Brozen, Madeline; Voulgaris, Carole Turley · 2016 · ROSA P / California. Department of Transportation

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Summary

This study investigates walking behavior in California to address the gap in understanding how walking trends relate to the built environment and regional travel demand models. Despite walking being the second most common travel mode in California—surpassing transit and bicycle usage—it remains understudied. The research aims to determine whether walking rates have changed over time, identify the determinants of walking (specifically the role of the built environment), explain changes in walking behavior, and assess how well current regional travel demand models incorporate walking. The study focuses on four major metropolitan areas: the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego. The authors utilized data from the 2001 and 2012 California Household Travel Surveys (CHTS), analyzing linked trips across approximately 42,000 households. The methodology involved logistic regression models to predict the odds of walking based on individual, household, trip, and neighborhood characteristics. Additionally, the study employed Tobit regression to analyze changes in walking mode shares relative to changes in neighborhood characteristics. To complement the statistical analysis, the researchers conducted interviews with Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to evaluate how walking is treated in regional travel demand forecasting. The findings reveal that walking mode share nearly doubled from 5% in 2001 to 9% in 2012, with the highest increases observed in Sacramento and San Diego. While walking remains a small share of total trips, it is nine times more prevalent than public transit or bicycling. The analysis identified that individual and trip characteristics, such as trip distance, purpose, and driver’s license status, are the strongest predictors of walking. Built environment characteristics, including density and intersection connectivity, showed a positive but relatively small effect on walking compared to individual factors. However, changes in the built environment, such as increased housing density, were positively associated with increases in walking over time. Notably, an increase in poverty rates was negatively correlated with walking mode share, while increased intersection density was positively correlated. The study concludes that while MPOs have largely shifted to activity-based models that better accommodate walking than traditional four-step models, significant gaps remain. These include a mismatch between model goals focused on highway/transit supply and the realities of pedestrian travel, as well as a lack of high-quality longitudinal data on pedestrian volumes and infrastructure. The authors recommend focusing on increasing intersection density, improving pedestrian route directness, and targeting built environment improvements in low-income and immigrant neighborhoods. They also advocate for better data collection on pedestrian environments and ensuring local access to destinations within a half-mile radius to further encourage walking.

Key finding

The share of trips by walking in California grew from 5 percent to 9 percent between 2001 and 2012, with built environment characteristics showing a positive but relatively small effect on walking compared to trip distance and individual characteristics.

Methodology

dataset

Sample size: 42000

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

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• pedestrian behavior perception