Tampa residents are walking much less

There's been a staggering decline in the number of trips Tampa Bay residents take by putting one foot in front of the other, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick and Kavya Beheraj report.

Why it matters: Walking is good for us.

• That's true both on an individual level (thanks to the many health benefits it confers) and in the big-picture climate change sense (given that it's the OG form of zero-emissions travel).

Driving the news: The number of annual average daily walking trips per 1,000 people in the Tampa metro area dropped about 28% between 2019 and 2022, per a new StreetLight Data report.

• There were 230 annual average daily walking trips per 1,000 people in 2022, compared to 320 in 2019.

How it works: StreetLight measures travel behavior based on anonymized data from mobile devices, vehicle GPS systems and more.

• For this analysis, one "walking trip" is any trip taken by foot that is more than 250 meters — about 820 feet — from start to finish.

Context: The Tampa Bay area has long been one of the most dangerous places in the country to be a pedestrian.

What they're saying: It's clear that the pandemic had an "obvious impact," StreetLight says. But beyond that, the group isn't sure what's keeping Americans off their feet.

• Some of this could be remote work, which can make it all too easy to become overly sedentary.
• And some of it could be part of the downtown recovery story — if a city has fewer restaurants, shops and so on open, there's less reason for locals and visitors to have a walkabout.