I am trying to use walking.walk a relatively short distance (about 50 tiles). The webWalk method uses a very long C shaped path whereas the walking.walk uses a perfect straight more efficient path. There are no obstacles in the way I should mention. I have previously tried using the webEvent.useSimplePath although it is still not a straight path. The problem I am having is getting walking.walk to execute without first running a webWalk to load the region I assume. Is there a way to load the area without first using webWalk? I've also tried getWalking().walkpath() with a static path but it does not seem to function properly, with the player getting stuck on a tile and the walking not progressing properly.

Well if you are trying to walk to a position without webwalking and the region is not loaded the A* pathing algotirm can't calculate a path since it needs the region tile data.
You can use a path like you said or just use webwalking if you are trying to walk longer distances