I would favour walking. Its far easier to get people to do it and most people can do it. A lot of infrastructure already exists and its cheaper and easier to improve.
If you provide reasonably public transport its far easier to walk. I drive into town, then park and walk, where I currently live because busses are infrequent. I never even owned a car in London because it has good public transport (to be fair, I probably would have if I lived in a suburb and had kids).
It's not XOR; you can do both. Most people who cycle also walk at times.
Why exclude cycling? You're range is ~5x walking - in the time and effort required to walk a mile, you could easily cycle 5 miles.
It doesn't have to be a universal panacea to be valuable. Walking isn't possible for everyone, including some who can cycle, and it's not useful for longer distances like 5 miles, ~2.5 hrs walking or 30 min cycling slowly.
16 minutes per mile (3.75mph) (5 miles in 80 minutes) is basically my 'fast walk' time in the city. My wife who is shorter has a hard time keeping up with that.
Unfortunately stop lights/etc. will also make this longer. My "best" pace where I actually do get tired is about 15 minutes per mile. Few can keep up a 4mph pace even on a dedicated walking trail with no elevation changes for any material length of time.
Most folks average probably greater than 20 minutes per mile, especially for longer walks. 2.5 hours is definitely on the extreme end, but close to 2 hours is probably more realistic for most.
The quote I was replying to was about return on investment. Money spent on cycling infrastructure is money not spent on walking and public transport. Spending money is definitely XOR.
I am arguing that walking for shorter distances and providing public transport for longer distances is a better use of money in most places.
> Why exclude cycling? You're range is ~5x walking
Your range for walking plus public transport is far greater.
One big problem I see with cycling is low uptake in most places - in most (not all, to be fair) places I know cycles lanes are mostly empty.
> Walking isn't possible for everyone, including some who can cycle
You are right that money is XOR. But cycling takes people of roads and improves the overall system while being very cheap. Also, you don't need dedicated super dutch style infrastructure to encurrage cycling. Making it safe for walking and cars to interact, ALSO makes it much, much better for cycling. Its a mistake in thinking that 'cycling' infrastructure is only dedicated cycling lanes. Encuriging cycling almost always pays off, in pretty every systematic measurment ever done on the topic. And if you reach Dutch level it pays of a gigantic amount. Its really low investment high return.
Cycle lanes actually look empty often because they are so much more efficent. They have done some studies on paths that were always empty and the threwput is usually not as bad as people think. To be sure the place you are refering to could be totally empty, it happens, but its not the norm even in the US.
Also, of course in a lot of places, specially in the US where they are really bad at cycling infratructure, they believe that all it takes is for one road to have a cycle lane and then magically people on bikes show up. They just want to get in on the 'hype' and were pressured to 'do something'. You need to actually be able to reasonably safely go from A to B between places that are vaguly useful. Dedicate cycling lanes make sense in places where there is no alterantive and you need cars to go resonably fast. But generally its more about your car infrastructure and how fast and dangerous your cars are. Improving cycling always goes hand in hand with making cars less dangerous, and that always pays off.
It takes some up front investment and actual planning, but its not like that infrastructure is worthless after a few years. Cycle lanes once built basically never get destroyed, so putting it in speculatively while having a long term plan makes a lot of sense.
I would favour walking. Its far easier to get people to do it and most people can do it. A lot of infrastructure already exists and its cheaper and easier to improve.
If you provide reasonably public transport its far easier to walk. I drive into town, then park and walk, where I currently live because busses are infrequent. I never even owned a car in London because it has good public transport (to be fair, I probably would have if I lived in a suburb and had kids).