Background Despite the key role of walking in achieving the 15-minute city, improving public health and reaching sustainability goals, walking ‘as a mode of transport’ is often overlooked in the transport planning discourse. Today, most emphasis is placed on either motorised transport or transport modes such as cycling, regardless of whether the focus is on city planning, logistics or safety. Given the low societal priority, pedestrian injuries account for a very large share of road traffic injuries in high income countries. To improve pedestrian safety and increase walkability, a deeper understanding of walking as a mode of transport is required.

Objective The aim of this study was to gather leading researchers and practitioners – in different and various ways related to walking as a mode of transport – to identify common problems, issues, and priorities, as well as to identify potential ways forward in solving these issues.

Methods During 2021 and 2023 a series of workshops with academics and practitioners across Scandinavia to address ‘levelling-up’ walking as a mode of transport were undertaken. Participants were strategically selected from the authors’ professional networks and data was collected both through individual surveys as well as in focus group seminars.

Results In total, 19 focus groups were held, both physically and online, with a total of 105 leading policymakers, practitioners and academics. In the analysis of the considerable material, a thematic model: realising walking as a mode of transport, evolved. Whilst illustrating an ideal construct in which planning and safety perspectives work coherently, combining different methodologies and input data, the focus group material also identified the problematic disparity and disconnectedness between the two overarching fields. The results also identified the knowledge gap regarding what the individual and societal needs are related to walking.

Conclusions The study can show that there is a strong desire amongst policymakers, practitioners and academics in levelling-up walking as a mode of transport and changing the status and hierarchy in the transport system. However, to do so requires a more holistic view, combining different methodologies and perspectives and better understanding how safety and planning traditions can be combined.