How can a route be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths?

Lots of roads – particularly US numbered roads in big cities – are cars-only (no pedestrians allowed) because there are nearby sidestreets.

And many cities/counties simply haven’t built sidewalks.

There can be any number of reasons why the routing is the way it is. Perhaps you can be more specific on the route you are interested in.

@elbanditoroso but do you have to spend half an hour trip to go one block? That is the part I find bad.

No sidewalk where pedistrians are allowed is dangerous.

Where I lived in both NC and TN there were plenty of streets that it was legal to walk but had no sidewalks, pedestrian paths, and not even a shoulder. Walking a half an hour for one block makes no sense to me, unless you need to walk around to a bridge or something.

They either don’t exist in the first place, or they are being worked on. I can’t think of a reason it’d take a half hour to walk a block, unless you had to make a huge detour.

That disclaimer is there because Google maps doesn’t always know where the best walking routes are and it will guess based on what little info it has. Basically, it is an incomplete feature and shouldn’t be relied upon.

Features like that are only useful for places like New York City and other major US cities

We have no sidewalks in our little hamlet. People walk, jog, and bike on the sides of the road. Low speed limits and courteous drivers (by and large) mean that it works.

Maybe it is a very long block.

This is so strange,. There is some convuluted construction underway that forces pedestrians to walk the small streets up and down and sideways for ½ hr to get to the next block. That is the shortest way. Someone I don’t really know was talking about it.

Most of the residential streets around here have no sidewalks simply because they’re too small.

Stay alert, and walk against the flow of traffic so you can see and be seen.

This OP is more about a route for pedistrians (there is none) just like there is for the cars.