Broken and cracked paths, a lack of detours and the odd wheelie bin make footpaths more like obstacle courses, particularly for people who roll through their community.
Community organisation Queensland Walks and health initiative 10,000 Steps recently encouraged pedestrians and wheelchair users to share videos and images of their local paths as part of Queensland Walks Month.
Queensland Walks Executive Office Anna Campbell said filming journeys from across the state was a powerful way of showing neighbourhoods what could be improved and allowed people to take a walk in someone's shoes," .
Submissions included wheelchair-cam and pram-cam footage.
"We notice that the community might ask their elected member to fill a pothole in the road but haven't been asking for walk-friendly and accessible neighbourhoods," Ms Campbell said.
She said she became more aware of the poor quality of footpaths when her son was a newborn.
"Pushing a pram gives you an extraordinary insight into what has been designed with the pedestrian in mind, and how hard it must be to move around our cities and suburbs in a wheelchair, with vision impairment, or using a mobility device," she said.
"Walk-friendliness is the difference of someone with a disability being able to easily move around their community or get to work or appointments."
Ms Campbell said simple things such as kerb ramps and stable footpaths were easy to implement, but were generally overlooked and underfunded.
"They're essential to getting you on and off the footpath and to the places where you need to go and without kerb ramps, it is impossible to get your wheelchair on and off the path and very difficult to push your pram to the local shop," she said.
"We can't continue this piecemeal approach to rolling out walk-friendly infrastructure especially with the Paralympic and the Olympics just around the corner."
Creating more walkable neighbourhoods
CQUniversity 10,000 Steps program manager Anetta Van Itallie said creating environments with connected pathways was essential to promote active transport.
"It's not only good for people's health, but has social, economic and environmental benefits too," Ms Van Itallie said.
"When considering sustainable behaviour change, the research shows that people do things out of habit, but for habits to 'stick', it must be enjoyable, efficient, or satisfying."
She said programs such as 10,000 Steps motivated people to use step tracking which could highlight that walking was satisfying and sometimes more efficient than driving and had a positive effect on physical, social and mental health.
Councils making a change
A handful of Queensland councils have started making changes by implementing people-focused design and walk-friendly footpaths and public spaces.
"Cairns recently redesigned the city centre by reducing signposted vehicle speeds, provided pram and wheelchair-friendly crossings and focused on shading," Ms Campbell said.
She said the City of Gold Coast slowed streets and installed raised priority crossings.
Raised crossings have also become more common in the Moreton Bay and Sunshine Coast council areas in south-east Queensland.
"Logan Council have designed a cargo bike to review every single footpath in the council area, for a maintenance and replacement program and to understand the missing footpath," she said.
But Ms Campbell said greater investment was needed to improve walking infrastructure.
"We know that Queensland parents are choosing to drive their children to school because the footpaths and roads to school are unsafe outside of their vehicle," Ms Campbell said.
"We have failed in our care-giving role that children can no longer walk or wheel to school because of the way we have set our budgets geared primarily for the movement of vehicles."
