Canberra has just scraped into Australia's top 10 most walkable cities, though local researchers believe the city should have scored better.
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Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide made up the three most walkable cities and suburbs in the country, according to assessor Walk Score.
On a scale of 0 to 100, Sydney received a score of 63 while Canberra managed just 40.
The capital's low score follows figures issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday that show that drivers in Canberra travelled the second-longest distance among drivers from all states and territories last year.
At an average 14,300 kilometres a registered vehicle, the ACT came a close second to Queensland drivers, who notched 14,900 kilometres.
Walk Score, a US company, uses a patent-pending system to measure walkability based on amenities and awards points involving the distance to services in each category.
But the results do not tell the whole story about the city's pedestrians, according to Xavier Goldie from the University of Canberra.
The spatial analysis research officer said walkability cannot be described as an average over a whole city, given that most people really walk only up to 1½ kilometres.
"It's a little meaningless to describe Canberra as 'unwalkable', given that we have a number of areas that are highly connected with diverse land use mix, higher population density and large number of amenities," Mr Goldie said.
He said walkability in Canberra was not as bad as it seemed at first glance.
Mr Goldie said the average Canberran lived within reasonable walking distance to a variety of amenities.
"Every Canberran lives within a 10-minute walk of a park or reserve, with over half of the city's population living within a two-minute walk," he said.
"Similarly, 90 per cent of our population live within a five- to seven-minute walk of a bus stop, with half of Canberrans living within four minutes' walk."
However there was room for improvement, according to Mr Goldie.
He said established suburbs in Belconnen, Weston Creek, Woden and Tuggeranong were dominated by cul-de-sacs and "car-dependent road hierarchies".
Meanwhile, the ACT government has announced a $230,00 upgrade of paved pedestrian areas at the northern end of Glebe Park.
About 1300 square metres of paving will be replaced.
The work is expected to be completed by July.
How do you think we stack up in terms of walkability? Leave your comments below.
