Out here where the air is clear and the people are all on long term sick/disability benefits / state pensions /low wages / universal credit there's always a body or two walking to a shop or a bus stop.
I think it's really easy to underestimate the volume of non-motorised traffic.
As a, well, nerd, I've been hosting a
Telraam traffic counter on behalf of the optimistically named
Car Free Cities Birmingham since last summer. It's basically a Raspberry Pi with a camera that peers out of my window and uses machine-vision voodoo to determine the direction, speed and type
[1] of traffic as it goes past.
Averaged over the last 6 months (the most I can return in a single database query), the traffic types are:
Pedestrian: 23.62 %
Two-wheeler: 30.16 %
Car: 40.43 %
Large vehicle: 5.79 %
I'd take the two-wheeler to pedestrian ratio with a large pinch of salt, as I don't think it does a very good job classifying either scooterboys or pedestrians with luggages, and it can mis-classify groups. As a student area pedestrians aren't rare, by any means, but it still surprised me that well over half the traffic was non-motorised.
Footways, like cycle lanes and railways look under-utilised because they're efficient.
[1]
Using a cunning algorithm that works a lot better than you'd expect it to.